RI JRATURE 


WILSON 


!i 


'   ;  :  :   --'  •'   \   '     '" 


CHAUNCEY  AND  ELIZABETH  LEAKE 


r?f?ij'7i 

•'  '  "  i-         '•  .  i  ,;->  2'i  /a 


THE  three  essays  included  in  this  volume  first 
saw  the  light  a  score  of  years  ago,  "Mere 
Literature"  in  the  Atlantic  for  December, 
1893,  "The  Author  Himself"  in  the  Atlantic 
for  September,  1891,  and  "On  an  Author's 
Choice  of  Company"  in  the  Century  Maga- 
zine for  March,  1896.  They  were  included 
with  five  other  papers,  chiefly  political,  in 
"Mere  Literature  and  Other  Essays,"  pub- 
lished in  1 896.  It  has  seemed  to  the  publish- 
ers that  the  election  of  the  author  to  the  office 
of  President  of  the  United  States,  an  event 
which  men  of  letters  everywhere  have  felt 
to  be  of  importance  in  the  history  of  letters, 
makes  appropriate  the  reissue  of  these  three 
essays  in  the  Riverside  Press  Series. 


MERE  LITERATURE 


MERE  LITERATURE 


BY  WOODROW  WILSON 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

MDCCCCXIII 


COPYRIGHT,    1896,   BY  WOODROW  WILSON 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


CONTENTS 

I.    "MERE  LITERATURE"  1 

II.    THE  AUTHOR  HIMSELF  39 

III.    ON  AN  AUTHOR'S  CHOICE  OF  COMPANY  69 


I 

"MERE  LITERATURE" 


MERE  LITERATURE 

i 

"MERE  LITERATURE'* 

A  SINGULAR  phrase  this,  "mere  literature/' 
— the  irreverent  invention  of  a  scientific  age. 
Literature  we  know,  but "  mere  "  literature  ? 
We  are  not  to  read  it  as  if  it  meant  sheer 
literature,  literature  in  the  essence,  stripped 
of  all  accidental  or  ephemeral  elements,  and 
left  with  nothing  but  its  immortal  charm  and 
power.  "Mere  literature " is  a  serious  sneer, 
conceived  in  all  honesty  by  the  scientific  mind, 
which  despises  things  that  do  not  fall  within 
the  categories  of  demonstrable  knowledge.  It 
means  nothing  but  literature,  as  who  should  say, 
"mere  talk,"  "mere  fabrication,"  "mere  pas- 
time." The  scientist,  with  his  head  comfortably 
and  excusably  full  of  knowable  things,  takes 
nothing  seriously  and  with  his  hat  off,  except 

3 


MERE  LITERATURE 

human  knowledge.  The  creations  of  the  hu- 
man spirit  are,  from  his  point  of  view,  incalcu- 
lable vagaries,  irresponsible  phenomena,  to  be 
regarded  only  as  play,  and,  for  the  mind's  good, 
only  as  recreation, — to  be  used  to  while  away 
the  tedium  of  a  railway  journey,  or  to  amuse  a 
period  of  rest  or  convalescence ;  mere  byplay, 
mere  make-believe. 

And  so  very  whimsical  things  sometimes 
happen,  because  of  this  scientific  and  positivist 
spirit  of  the  age,  when  the  study  of  the  litera- 
ture of  any  language  is  made  part  of  the  cur- 
riculum of  our  colleges.  The  more  delicate  and 
subtle  purposes  of  the  study  are  put  quite  out 
of  countenance,  and  literature  is  commanded 
to  assume  the  phrases  and  the  methods  of 
science.  It  would  be  very  painful  if  it  should 
turn  out  that  schools  and  universities  were 
agencies  of  Philistinism  ;  but  there  are  some 
things  which  should  prepare  us  for  such  a  dis- 
covery. Our  present  plans  for  teaching  every- 
body involve  certain  unpleasant  things  quite 

4 


MERE  LITERATURE 

inevitably.  It  is  obvious  that  you  cannot  have 
universal  education  without  restricting  your 
teaching  to  such  things  as  can  be  universally 
understood.  It  is  plain  that  you  cannot  impart 
"university  methods  "  to  thousands,  or  create 
"investigators  "  by  the  score,  unless  you  con- 
fine your  university  education  to  matters  which 
dull  men  can  investigate,  your  laboratory 
training  to  tasks  which  mere  plodding  dili- 
gence and  submissive  patience  can  compass. 
Yet,  if  you  do  so  limit  and  constrain  what  you 
teach,  you  thrust  taste  and  insight  and  delicacy 
of  perception  out  of  the  schools,  exalt  the  obvi- 
ous and  the  merely  useful  above  the  things 
which  are  only  imaginatively  or  spiritually  con- 
ceived, make  education  an  affair  of  tasting  and 
handling  and  smelling,  and  so  create  Philistia, 
that  country  in  which  they  speak  of  "mere  lit- 
erature." I  suppose  that  in  Nirvana  one  would 
speak  in  like  wise  of  "  mere  life." 

The  fear,  at  any  rate,  that  such  things  may 
happen  cannot  fail  to  set  us  anxiously  pon- 

5 


MERE  LITERATURE 

dering  certain  questions  about  the  systematic 
teaching  of  literature  in  our  schools  and  col- 
leges. How  are  we  to  impart  classical  writings 
to  the  children  of  the  general  public?  "Be- 
shrew  the  general  public!"  cries  Mr.  Birrell. 
"What  in  the  name  of  the  Bodleian  has  the 
general  public  got  to  do  with  literature? "  Un- 
fortunately, it  has  a  great  deal  to  do  with  it;  for 
are  we  not  complacently  forcing  the  general 
public  into  our  universities,  and  are  we  not  ar- 
ranging that  all  its  sons  shall  be  instructed  how 
they  may  themselves  master  and  teach  our 
literature  ?  You  have  nowadays,  it  is  believed, 
only  to  heed  the  suggestions  of  pedagogics  in 
order  to  know  how  to  impart  Burke  or  Brown- 
ing, Dryden  or  Swift.  There  are  certain  prac- 
tical difficulties,  indeed;  but  there  are  ways  of 
overcoming  them.  You  must  have  strength  if 
you  would  handle  with  real  mastery  the  firm 
fibre  of  these  men;  you  must  have  a  heart, 
moreover,  to  feel  their  warmth,  an  eye  to  see 
what  they  see,  an  imagination  to  keep  them 

6 


MERE  LITERATURE 

company,  a  pulse  to  experience  their  delights. 
But  if  you  have  none  of  these  things,  you  may 
make  shift  to  do  without  them.  You  may  count 
the  words  they  use,  instead,  note  the  changes 
of  phrase  they  make  in  successive  revisions,  put 
their  rhythm  into  a  scale  of  feet,  run  their  allu- 
sions— particularly  their  female  allusions — 
to  cover,  detect  them  in  their  previous  reading. 
Or,  if  none  of  these  things  please  you,  or  you 
find  the  big  authors  difficult  or  dull,  you  may 
drag  to  light  all  the  minor  writers  of  their  time, 
who  are  easy  to  understand.  By  setting  an  ex- 
ample in  such  methods  you  render  great  serv- 
ices in  certain  directions.  You  make  the  higher 
degrees  of  our  universities  available  for  the 
large  number  of  respectable  men  who  can 
count  and  measure  and  search  diligently ;  and 
that  may  prove  no  small  matter.  You  divert  at- 
tention from  thought,  which  is  not  always  easy 
to  get  at,  and  fix  attention  upon  language,  as 
upon  a  curious  mechanism,  which  can  be  per- 
ceived with  the  bodily  eye,  and  which  is  worthy 

7 


MERE  LITERATURE 

to  be  studied  for  its  own  sake,  quite  apart  from 
anything  it  may  mean.  You  encourage  the  ex- 
amination of  forms,  grammatical  and  metrical, 
which  can  be  quite  accurately  determined  and 
quite  exhaustively  catalogued.  You  bring  all 
the  visible  phenomena  of  writing  to  light  and 
into  ordered  system.  You  go  further,  and  show 
how  to  make  careful  literal  identification  of 
stories  somewhere  told  ill  and  without  art  with 
the  same  stories  told  over  again  by  the  mas- 
ters, well  and  with  the  transfiguring  effect 
of  genius.  You  thus  broaden  the  area  of  sci- 
ence; for  you  rescue  the  concrete  phenomena 
of  the  expression  of  thought — the  necessary 
syllabification  which  accompanies  it,  the  inev- 
itable juxtaposition  of  words,  the  constant  use 
of  particles,  the  habitual  display  of  roots,  the 
inveterate  repetition  of  names,  the  recurrent 
employment  of  meanings  heard  or  read  — 
from  their  confusion  with  the  otherwise  un- 
classifiable  manifestations  of  what  had  hither- 
to been  accepted,  without  critical  examination, 

8 


MERE  LITERATURE 

under  the  lump  term  "  literature,"  simply  for 
the  pleasure  and  spiritual  edification  to  be  got 
from  it. 

An  instructive  differentiation  ensues.  In  con- 
trast with  the  orderly  phenomena  of  speech 
and  writing,  which  are  amenable  to  scientific 
processes  of  examination  and  classification,  and 
which  take  rank  with  the  orderly  successions 
of  change  in  nature,  we  have  what,  for  want  of 
a  more  exact  term,  we  call  "mere  literature," 
—  the  literature  which  is  not  an  expression  of 
form,  but  an  expression  of  spirit.  This  is  a  fu- 
gitive and  troublesome  thing,  and  perhaps 
does  not  belong  in  well-conceived  plans  of  uni- 
versal instruction;  for  it  offers  many  embar- 
rassments to  pedagogic  method.  It  escapes  all 
scientific  categories.  It  is  not  pervious  to  re- 
search. It  is  too  wayward  to  be  brought  under 
the  discipline  of  exposition.  It  is  an  attribute 
of  so  many  different  substances  at  one  and  the 
same  time,  that  the  consistent  scientific  man 
must  needs  put  it  forth  from  his  company,  as 

9 


MERE  LITERATURE 

without  responsible  connections.  By  "mere 
literature  "  he  means  mere  evanescent  color, 
wanton  trick  of  phrase,  perverse  departures 
from  categorical  statement,  —  something  all 
personal  equation,  such  stuff  as  dreams  are 
made  of. 

We  must  not  all,  however,  be  impatient  of 
this  truant  child  of  fancy.  When  the  schools 
cast  her  out,  she  will  stand  in  need  of  friendly 
succor,  and  we  must  train  our  spirits  for  the 
function.  We  must  be  free-hearted  in  order 
to  make  her  happy,  for  she  will  accept  enter- 
tainment from  no  sober,  prudent  fellow  who 
shall  counsel  her  to  mend  her  ways.  She  has 
always  made  light  of  hardship,  and  she  has 
never  loved  or  obeyed  any,  save  those  who  were 
of  her  own  mind,  —  those  who  were  indul- 
gent to  her  humors,  responsive  to  her  ways  of 
thought,  attentive  to  her  whims,  content  with 
her  "  mere  ''charms.  She  already  has  her  small 
following  of  devotees,  like  all  charming,  capri- 
cious mistresses.  There  are  some  still  who 

10 


MERE  LITERATURE 

think  that  to  know  her  is  better  than  a  liberal 
education. 

There  is  but  one  way  in  which  you  can  take 
mere  literature  as  an  education,  and  that  is  di- 
rectly, at  first  hand.  Almost  any  media  except 
her  own  language  and  touch  and  tone  are  non- 
conducting. A  descriptive  catalogue  of  a  col- 
lection of  paintings  is  no  substitute  for  the  little 
areas  of  color  and  form  themselves.  You  do  not 
want  to  hear  about  a  beautiful  woman,  simply, 
—  how  she  was  dressed,  how  she  bore  herself, 
how  the  fine  color  flowed  sweetly  here  and 
there  upon  her  cheeks,  how  her  eyes  burned 
and  melted,  how  her  voice  thrilled  through  the 
ears  of  those  about  her.  If  you  have  ever  seen 
a  woman,  these  things  but  tantalize  and  hurt 
you,  if  you  cannot  see  her.  You  want  to  be  in 
her  presence.  You  know  that  only  your  own 
eyes  can  give  you  direct  knowledge  of  her. 
Nothing  but  her  presence  contains  her  life.  'T  is 
the  same  with  the  authentic  products  of  liter- 
ature. You  can  never  get  their  beauty  at  sec- 

11 


MERE  LITERATURE 

ond  hand,  or  feel  their  power  except  by  direct 
contact  with  them. 

It  is  a  strange  and  occult  thing  how  this  qual- 
ity of  "  mere  literature  "  enters  into  one  book, 
and  is  absent  from  another;  but  no  man  who 
has  once  felt  it  can  mistake  it.  I  was  reading 
the  other  day  a  book  about  Canada.  It  is  written 
in  what  the  reviewers  have  pronounced  to  be 
an  "admirable,  spirited  style."  By  this  I  take 
them  to  mean  that  it  is  grammatical,  orderly, 
and  full  of  strong  adjectives.  But  these  review- 
ers would  have  known  more  about  the  style 
in  which  it  is  written  if  they  had  noted  what 
happens  on  page  84.  There  a  quotation  from 
Burke  occurs.  "There  is,"  says  Burke,  "but  one 
healing,  catholic  principle  of  toleration  which 
ought  to  find  favor  in  this  house.  It  is  wanted 
not  only  in  our  colonies,  but  here.  The  thirsty 
earth  of  our  own  country  is  gasping  and  gap- 
ing and  crying  out  for  that  healing  shower  from 
heaven.  The  noble  lord  has  told  you  of  the 
right  of  those  people  by  treaty ;  but  I  consider 

12 


MERE  LITERATURE 

the  right  of  conquest  so  little,  and  the  right  of 
human  nature  so  much,  that  the  former  has  very 
little  consideration  with  me.  I  look  upon  the 
people  of  Canada  as  coming  by  the  dispensation 
of  God  under  the  British  government.  I  would 
have  us  govern  it  in  the  same  manner  as  the  all- 
wise  disposition  of  Providence  would  govern  it. 
We  know  he  suffers  the  sun  to  shine  upon  the 
righteous  and  the  unrighteous ;  and  we  ought 
to  suffer  all  classes  to  enjoy  equally  the  right 
of  worshiping  God  according  to  the  light  he 
has  been  pleased  to  give  them."  The  peculiar- 
ity of  such  a  passage  as  that  is,  that  it  needs  no 
context.  Its  beauty  seems  almost  independent 
of  its  subject  matter.  It  comes  on  that  eighty- 
fourth  page  like  a  burst  of  music  in  the  midst 
of  small  talk,  — atone  of  sweet  harmony  heard 
amidst  a  rattle  of  phrases.  The  mild  noise  was 
unobjectionable  enough  until  the  music  came. 
There  is  a  breath  and  stir  of  life  in  those  sen- 
tences of  Burke 's  which  is  to  be  perceived 
in  nothing  else  in  that  volume.  Your  pulses 

13 


MERE  LITERATURE 

catch  a  quicker  movement  from  them,  and  are 
stronger  on  their  account. 

It  is  so  with  all  essential  literature.  It  has  a 
quality  to  move  you,  and  you  can  never  mis- 
take it,  if  you  have  any  blood  in  you.  And  it  has 
also  a  power  to  instruct  you  which  is  as  effec- 
tive as  it  is  subtle,  and  which  no  research  or 
systematic  method  can  ever  rival.  'Tis  a  sore 
pity  if  that  power  cannot  be  made  available  in 
the  classroom.  It  is  not  merely  that  it  quickens 
your  thought  and  fills  your  imagination  with 
the  images  that  have  illuminated  the  choicer 
minds  of  the  race.  It  does  indeed  exercise  the 
faculties  in  this  wise,  bringing  them  into  the  best 
atmosphere,  and  into  the  presence  of  the  men 
of  greatest  charm  and  force ;  but  it  does  a  great 
deal  more  than  that.  It  acquaints  the  mind,  by 
direct  contact,  with  the  forces  which  really 
govern  and  modify  the  world  from  generation 
to  generation.  There  is  more  of  a  nation's  poli- 
tics to  be  got  out  of  its  poetry  than  out  of  all 
its  systematic  writers  upon  public  affairs  and 

14 


MERE  LITERATURE 

constitutions.  Epics  are  better  mirrors  of  man- 
ners than  chronicles;  dramas  oftentimes  let 
you  into  the  secrets  of  statutes ;  orations  stirred 
by  a  deep  energy  of  emotion  or  resolution,  pas- 
sionate pamphlets  that  survive  their  mission 
because  of  the  direct  action  of  their  style  along 
permanent  lines  of  thought,  contain  more  his- 
tory than  parliamentary  journals.  It  is  not 
knowledge  that  moves  the  world,  but  ideals, 
convictions,  the  opinions  or  fancies  that  have 
been  held  or  followed ;  and  whoever  studies 
humanity  ought  to  study  it  alive,  practice  the 
vivisection  of  reading  literature,  and  acquaint 
himself  with  something  more  than  anatomies 
which  are  no  longer  in  use  by  spirits. 

There  are  some  words  of  Thibaut,  the  great 
jurist,  which  have  long  seemed  to  me  singu- 
larly penetrative  of  one  of  the  secrets  of  the 
intellectual  life.  "I  told  him/'  he  says, — he  is 
speaking  of  an  interview  with  Niebuhr,  — "I 
told  him  that  I  owed  my  gayety  and  vigor,  in 
great  part,  to  my  love  for  the  classics  of  all 

15 


MERE  LITERATURE 

ages,  even  those  outside  the  domain  of  jurispru- 
dence. "  Not  only  the  gayety  and  vigor  of  his 
hale  old  age,  surely,  but  also  his  insight  into  the 
meaning  and  purpose  of  laws  and  institutions. 
The  jurist  who  does  not  love  the  classics  of  all 
ages  is  like  a  post-mortem  doctor  presiding  at 
a  birth,  a  maker  of  manikins  prescribing  for  a 
disease  of  the  blood,  a  student  of  masks  setting 
up  for  a  connoisseur  in  smiles  and  kisses.  In 
narrating  history,  you  are  speaking  of  what 
was  done  by  men ;  in  discoursing  of  laws,  you 
are  seeking  to  show  what  courses  of  action,  and 
what  manner  of  dealing  with  one  another,  men 
have  adopted.  You  can  neither  tell  the  story  nor 
conceive  the  law  till  you  know  how  the  men 
you  speak  of  regarded  themselves  and  one  an- 
other; and  I  know  of  no  way  of  learning  this  but 
by  reading  the  stories  they  have  told  of  them- 
selves, the  songs  they  have  sung,  the  heroic 
adventures  they  have  applauded.  I  must  know 
what,  if  anything,  they  revered;  I  must  hear 
their  sneers  and  gibes;  must  learn  in  what 

16 


MERE  LITERATURE 

accents  they  spoke  love  within  the  family  cir- 
cle ;  with  what  grace  they  obeyed  their  supe- 
riors in  station ;  how  they  conceived  it  politic 
to  live,  and  wise  to  die ;  how  they  esteemed 
property,  and  what  they  deemed  privilege; 
when  they  kept  holiday,  and  why ;  when  they 
were  prone  to  resist  oppression,  and  wherefore, 
—  I  must  see  things  with  their  eyes,  before  I 
can  comprehend  their  law  books.  Their  jural 
relationships  are  not  independent  of  their  way 
of  living,  and  their  way  of  thinking  is  the  mir- 
ror of  their  way  of  living. 

It  is  doubtless  due  to  the  scientific  spirit  of 
the  age  that  these  plain,  these  immemorial 
truths  are  in  danger  of  becoming  obscured. 
Science,  under  the  influence  of  the  conception 
of  evolution,  devotes  itself  to  the  study  of  forms, 
of  specific  differences,  of  the  manner  in  which 
the  same  principle  of  life  manifests  itself  vari- 
ously under  the  compulsions  of  changes  of 
environment.  It  is  thus  that  it  has  become 
«« scientific"  to  set  forth  the  manner  in  which 

17 


MERE  LITERATURE 

man's  nature  submits  to  man's  circumstances ; 
scientific  to  disclose  morbid  moods,  and  the 
conditions  which  produce  them ;  scientific  to  re- 
gard man,  not  as  the  centre  or  source  of  power, 
but  as  subject  to  power,  a  register  of  external 
forces  instead  of  an  originative  soul,  and  char- 
acteras  a  productof  man's  circumstances  rather 
than  a  sign  of  man's  mastery  over  circum- 
stance. It  is  thus  that  it  has  become  "scien- 
tific" to  analyze  language  as  itself  a  com- 
manding element  in  man's  life.  The  history  of 
word-roots,  their  modification  under  the  influ- 
ences of  changes  wrought  in  the  vocal  organs 
by  habit  or  by  climate,  the  laws  of  phonetic 
change  to  which  they  are  obedient,  and  their 
persistence  under  all  disguises  of  dialect,  as  if 
they  were  full  of  a  self-originated  life,  a  self- 
directed  energy  of  influence,  is  united  with  the 
study  of  grammatical  forms  in  the  construction 
of  scientific  conceptions  of  the  evolution  and 
uses  of  human  speech.  The  impression  is  cre- 
ated that  literature  is  only  the  chosen  vessel 

18 


MERE  LITERATURE 

of  these  forms,  disclosing  to  us  their  modifica- 
tion in  use  and  structure  from  age  to  age.  Such 
vitality  as  the  masterpieces  of  genius  possess 
comes  to  seem  only  a  dramatization  of  the  for- 
tunes of  words.  Great  writers  construct  for  the 
adventures  of  language  their  appropriate  epics. 
Or,  if  it  be  not  the  words  themselves  that  are 
scrutinized,  but  the  style  of  their  use,  that  style 
becomes,  instead  of  a  fine  essence  of  person- 
ality, a  matter  of  cadence  merely,  or  of  gram- 
matical and  structural  relationships.  Science  is 
the  study  of  the  forces  of  the  world  of  matter, 
the  adj  ustments,  the  apparatus,  of  the  universe ; 
and  the  scientific  study  of  literature  has  like- 
wise become  a  study  of  apparatus,  —  of  the 
forms  in  which  men  utter  thought,  and  the 
forces  by  which  those  forms  have  been  and  still 
are  being  modified,  rather  than  of  thought  it- 
self. 

The  essences  of  literature  of  course  remain 
the  same  under  all  forms,  and  the  true  study 
of  literature  is  the  study  of  these  essences,  —  a 

19 


MERE  LITERATURE 

study,  not  of  forms  or  of  differences,  but  of  like- 
nesses, —  likenesses  of  spirit  and  intent  under 
whatever  varieties  of  method,  running  through 
all  forms  of  speech  like  the  same  music  along 
the  chords  of  various  instruments.  There  is  a 
sense  in  which  literature  is  independent  of 
form,  just  as  there  is  a  sense  in  which  music 
is  independent  of  its  instrument.  It  is  my  cher- 
ished belief  that  Apollo's  pipe  contained  as 
much  eloquent  music  as  any  modern  orchestra. 
Some  books  live ;  many  die :  wherein  is  the  se- 
cret of  immortality  ?  Not  in  beauty  of  form,  nor 
even  in  force  of  passion.  We  might  say  of  lit- 
erature what  Wordsworth  said  of  poetry,  the 
most  easily  immortal  part  of  literature :  it  is 
"the  impassioned  expression  which  is  in  the 
countenance  of  all  science;  it  is  the  breath 
of  the  finer  spirit  of  all  knowledge."  Poetry 
has  the  easier  immortality  because  it  has  the 
sweeter  accent  when  it  speaks,  because  its 
phrases  linger  in  our  ears  to  delight  them,  be- 
cause its  truths  are  also  melodies.  Prose  has 

20 


MERE  LITERATURE 

much  to  overcome,  —  its  plainness  of  visage, 
its  less  musical  accents,  its  homelier  turns  of 
phrase.  But  it  also  may  contain  the  immortal 
essence  of  truth  and  seriousness  and  high 
thought.  It  too  may  clothe  conviction  with  the 
beauty  that  must  make  it  shine  forever.  Let  a 
man  but  have  beauty  in  his  heart,  and,  believ- 
ing something  with  his  might,  put  it  forth 
arrayed  as  he  sees  it,  the  lights  and  shadows 
'falling  upon  it  on  his  page  as  they  fall  upon  it 
in  his  heart,  and  he  may  die  assured  that  that 
beauty  will  not  pass  away  out  of  the  world. 

Biographers  have  often  been  puzzled  by  the 
contrast  between  certain  men  as  they  lived  and 
as  they  wrote.  Schopenhauer's  case  is  one  of 
the  most  singular.  A  man  of  turbulent  life, 
suffering  himself  to  be  cut  to  exasperation  by 
the  petty  worries  of  his  lot,  he  was  neverthe- 
less calm  and  wise  when  he  wrote,  as  if  the 
Muse  had  rebuked  him.  He  wrote  at  a  still 
elevation,  where  small  and  temporary  things 
did  not  come  to  disturb  him.  'T  is  a  pity  that 

21 


MERE  LITERATURE 

for  some  men  this  elevation  is  so  far  to  seek. 
They  lose  permanency  by  not  finding  it.  Could 
there  be  a  deliberate  regimen  of  life  for  the 
author,  it  is  plain  enough  how  he  ought  to  live, 
not  as  seeking  fame,  but  as  deserving  it. 

"  Fame,  like  a  wayward  girl,  will  still  be  coy 
To  those  who  woo  her  with  too  slavish  knees; 
But  makes  surrender  to  some  thoughtless  boy, 
And  dotes  the  more  upon  a  heart  at  ease. 

"  Ye  love-sick  bards,  repay  her  scorn  with  scorn; 
Ye  love-sick  artists,  madmen  that  ye  are, 
Make  your  best  bow  to  her  and  bid  adieu; 
Then,  if  she  likes  it,  she  will  follow  you." 

It  behooves  all  minor  authors  to  realize  the 
possibility  of  their  being  discovered  some  day, 
and  exposed  to  the  general  scrutiny.  They 
ought  to  live  as  if  conscious  of  the  risk.  They 
ought  to  purge  their  hearts  of  everything  that 
is  not  genuine  and  capable  of  lasting  the  world 
a  century,  at  least,  if  need  be.  Mere  literature 
is  made  of  spirit.  The  difficulties  of  style  are 
the  artist's  difficulties  with  his  tools.  The  spirit 

22 


MERE  LITERATURE 

that  is  in  the  eye,  in  the  pose,  in  mien  or  ges- 
ture, the  painter  must  find  in  his  color-box  ;  as 
he  must  find  also  the  spirit  that  nature  displays 
upon  the  face  of  the  fields  or  in  the  hidden 
places  of  the  forest.  The  writer  has  less  obvi- 
ous means.  Word  and  spirit  do  not  easily  con- 
sort. The  language  which  the  philologists  set 
out  before  us  with  such  curious  erudition  is  of 
very  little  use  as  a  vehicle  for  the  essences  of 
the  human  spirit.  It  is  too  sophisticated  and 
self-conscious.  What  you  need  is,  not  a  critical 
knowledge  of  language,  but  a  quick  feeling  for 
it.  You  must  recognize  the  affinities  between 
your  spirit  and  its  idioms.  You  must  immerse 
your  phrase  in  your  thought,  your  thought  in 
your  phrase,  till  each  becomes  saturated  with 
the  other.  Then  what  you  produce  is  as  neces- 
sarily fit  for  permanency  as  if  it  were  incar- 
nated spirit. 

And  you  must  produce  in  color,  with  the 
touch  of  imagination  which  lifts  what  you  write 
away  from  the  dull  levels  of  mere  exposition. 

23 


MERE  LITERATURE 

Black-and-white  sketches  may  serve  some 
purposes  of  the  artist,  but  very  little  of  actual 
nature  is  in  mere  black-and-white.  The  im- 
agination never  works  thus  with  satisfaction. 
Nothing  is  ever  conceived  completely  when 
conceived  so  grayly,  without  suffusion  of  real 
light.  The  mind  creates,  as  great  Nature  does, 
in  colors,  with  deep  chiaroscuro  and  burning 
lights.  This  is  true  not  only  of  poetry  and  essen- 
tially imaginative  writing,  but  also  of  the  writ- 
ing which  seeks  nothing  more  than  to  penetrate 
the  meaning  of  actual  affairs,  —  the  writing  of 
the  greatest  historians  and  philosophers,  the 
utterances  of  orators  and  of  the  great  masters 
of  political  exposition.  Their  narratives,  their 
analyses,  their  appeals,  their  conceptions  of 
principle,  are  all  dipped  deep  in  the  colors  of  the 
life  they  expound.  Their  minds  respond  only 
to  realities,  their  eyes  see  only  actual  circum- 
stance. Their  sentences  quiver  and  are  quick 
with  visions  of  human  affairs, — how  minds  are 
bent  or  governed,  how  action  is  shaped  or 

24 


MERE  LITERATURE 

thwarted.  The  great "  constructive  "  minds,  as 
we  call  them,  are  of  this  sort.  They  "  con- 
struct" by  seeing  what  others  have  not  imagi- 
nation enough  to  see.  They  do  not  always  know 
more,  but  they  always  realize  more.  Let  the 
singular  reconstruction  of  Roman  history  and 
institutions  by  Theodor  Mommsen  serve  as  an 
illustration.  Safe  men  distrust  this  great  master. 
They  cannot  find  what  he  finds  in  the  docu- 
ments. They  will  draw  you  truncated  figures 
of  the  antique  Roman  state,  and  tell  you  the 
limbs  cannot  be  found,  the  features  of  the  face 
have  nowhere  been  unearthed.  They  will  cite 
you  fragments  such  as  remain,  and  show  you 
how  far  these  can  be  pieced  together  toward 
the  making  of  a  complete  description  of  private 
life  and  public  function  in  those  first  times 
when  the  Roman  commonwealth  was  young; 
but  what  the  missing  sentences  were  they  can 
only  weakly  conjecture.  Their  eyes  cannot 
descry  those  distant  days  witl)  no  other  aids 
than  these.  Only  the  greatest  are  dissatisfied, 

25 


MERE  LITERATURE 

and  go  on  to  paint  that  ancient  life  with  the 
materials  that  will  render  it  lifelike, —  the  ma- 
terials of  the  constructive  imagination.  They 
have  other  sources  of  information.  They  see 
living  men  in  the  old  documents.  Give  them 
but  the  torso,  and  they  will  supply  head  and 
limbs,  bright  and  animate  as  they  must  have 
been.  If  Mommsen  does  not  quite  do  that,  an- 
other man,  with  Mommsen's  eye  and  a  touch 
more  of  color  on  his  brush,  might  have  done  it, 
—  may  yet  do  it. 

It  is  in  this  way  that  we  get  some  glimpse  of 
the  only  relations  that  scholarship  bears  to  lit- 
erature. Literature  can  do  without  exact  schol- 
arship, or  any  scholarship  at  all,  though  it  may 
impoverish  itself  thereby;  but  scholarship  can 
not  do  without  literature.  It  needs  literature 
to  float  it,  to  set  it  current,  to  authenticate  it  to 
the  race,  to  get  it  out  of  closets,  and  into  the 
brains  of  men  who  stir  abroad.  It  will  adorn 
literature,  no  doubt;  literature  will  be  the 
richer  for  its  presence ;  but  it  will  not,  it  cannot, 

26 


MERE  LITERATURE 

of  itself  create  literature.  Rich  stuffs  from  the 
East  do  not  create  a  king,  nor  warlike  trap- 
pings a  conqueror.  There  is,  indeed,  a  natural 
antagonism,  let  it  be  frankly  said,  between  the 
standards  of  scholarship  and  the  standards  of 
literature.  Exact  scholarship  values  things  in 
direct  proportion  as  they  are  verifiable;  but 
literature  knows  nothing  of  such  tests.  The 
truths  which  it  seeks  are  the  truths  of  self-ex- 
pression. It  is  a  thing  of  convictions,  of  insights, 
of  what  is  felt  and  seen  and  heard  and  hoped 
for.  Its  meanings  lurk  behind  nature,  not  in  the 
facts  of  its  phenomena.  It  speaks  of  things  as 
the  man  who  utters  it  saw  them,  not  necessa- 
rily as  God  made  them.  The  personality  of  the 
speaker  runs  throughout  all  the  sentences  of 
real  literature.  That  personality  may  not  be 
the  personality  of  a  poet :  it  may  be  only  the 
personality  of  the  penetrative  seer.  It  may  not 
have  the  atmosphere  in  which  visions  are  seen, 
but  only  that  in  which  men  and  affairs  look 
keenly  cut  in  outline,  boldly  massed  in  bulk, 

27 


MERE  LITERATURE 

consummately  grouped  in  detail,  to  the  reader 
as  to  the  writer.  Sentences  of  perfectly  clari- 
fied wisdom  may  be  literature  no  less  than 
stanzas  of  inspired  song,  or  the  intense  utter- 
ances of  impassioned  feeling.  The  personality 
of  the  sunlight  is  in  the  keen  lines  of  light  that 
run  along  the  edges  of  a  sword  no  less  than  in 
the  burning  splendor  of  the  rose  or  the  radiant 
kindlings  of  a  woman's  eye.  You  may  feel  the 
power  of  one  master  of  thought  playing  upon 
your  brain  as  you  may  feel  that  of  another 
playing  upon  your  heart. 

Scholarship  gets  into  literature  by  becoming 
part  of  the  originating  individuality  of  a  mas- 
ter of  thought.  No  man  is  a  master  of  thought 
without  being  also  a  master  of  its  vehicle  and 
instrument,  style,  that  subtle  medium  of  all  its 
evasive  effects  of  light  and  shade.  Scholarship 
is  material ;  it  is  not  life.  It  becomes  immortal 
only  when  it  is  worked  upon  by  conviction, 
by  schooled  and  chastened  imagination,  by 
thought  that  runs  alive  out  of  the  inner  foun- 

28 


MERE  LITERATURE 

tains  of  individual  insight  and  purpose.  Color- 
less, or  without  suffusion  of  light  from  some 
source  of  light,  it  is  dead,  and  will  not  twice  be 
looked  at ;  but  made  part  of  the  life  of  a  great 
mind,  subordinated,  absorbed,  put  forth  with 
authentic  stamp  of  currency  on  it,  minted  at 
some  definite  mint  and  bearing  some  sovereign 
image,  it  will  even  outlast  the  time  when  it 
shall  have  ceased  to  deserve  the  acceptance  of 
scholars,  —  when  it  shall,  in  fact,  have  become 
"mere  literature." 

Scholarship  is  the  realm  of  nicely  adjusted 
opinion.  It  is  the  business  of  scholars  to  assess 
evidence  and  test  conclusions,  to  discriminate 
values  and  reckon  probabilities.  Literature  is 
the  realm  of  conviction  and  vision.  Its  points 
of  view  are  as  various  as  they  are  oftentimes 
un verifiable.  It  speaks  individual  faiths.  Its 
groundwork  is  not  erudition,  but  reflection 
and  fancy.  Your  thoroughgoing  scholar  dare 
not  reflect.  To  reflect  is  to  let  himself  in  on  his 
material;  whereas  what  he  wants  is  to  keep 

29 


MERE  LITERATURE 

himself  apart,  and  view  his  materials  in  an  air 
that  does  not  color  or  refract.  To  reflect  is  to 
throw  an  atmosphere  about  what  is  in  your 
mind,  —  an  atmosphere  which  holds  all  the 
colors  of  your  life.  Reflection  summons  all  as- 
sociations, and  they  so  throng  and  move  that 
they  dominate  the  mind's  stage  at  once.  The 
plot  is  in  their  hands.  Scholars,  therefore,  do 
not  reflect;  they  label,  group  kind  with  kind, 
set  forth  in  schemes,  expound  with  dispassion- 
ate method.  Their  minds  are  not  stages,  but 
museums ;  nothing  is  done  there,  but  very  curi- 
ous and  valuable  collections  are  kept  there.  If 
literature  use  scholarship,  it  is  only  to  fill  it 
with  fancies  or  shape  it  to  new  standards,  of 
which  of  itself  it  can  know  nothing. 

True,  there  are  books  reckoned  primarily 
books  of  science  and  of  scholarship  which  have 
nevertheless  won  standing  as  literature ;  books 
of  science  such  as  Newton  wrote,  books  of 
scholarship  such  as  Gibbon's.  But  science  was 
only  the  vestibule  by  v/hich  such  a  man  as  New- 
go 


MERE  LITERATURE 

ton  entered  the  temple  of  nature,  and  the  art 
he  practiced  was  not  the  art  of  exposition,  but 
the  art  of  divination.  He  was  not  only  a  scien- 
tist, but  also  a  seer ;  and  we  shall  not  lose  sight 
of  Newton  because  we  value  what  he  was  more 
than  what  he  knew.  If  we  continue  Gibbon  in 
his  fame,  it  will  be  for  love  of  his  art,  not  for 
worship  of  his  scholarship.  We  some  of  us, 
nowadays,  know  the  period  of  which  he  wrote 
better  even  than  he  did ;  but  which  one  of  us 
shall  build  so  admirable  a  monument  to  our- 
selves, as  artists,  out  of  what  we  know  ?  The 
scholar  finds  his  immortality  in  the  form  he 
gives  to  his  work.  It  is  a  hard  saying,  but  the 
truth  of  it  is  inexorable :  be  an  artist,  or  prepare 
for  oblivion.  You  may  write  a  chronicle,  but 
you  will  not  serve  yourself  thereby.  You  will 
only  serve  some  fellow  who  shall  come  after 
you,  possessing,  what  you  did  not  have,  an  ear 
for  the  words  you  could  not  hit  upon ;  an  eye 
for  the  colors  you  could  not  see ;  a  hand  for  the 
strokes  you  missed. 

Si 


MERE  LITERATURE 

Real  literature  you  can  always  distinguish 
by  its  form,  and  yet  it  is  not  possible  to  indicate 
the  form  it  should  have.  It  is  easy  to  say  that  it 
should  have  a  form  suitable  to  its  matter;  but 
how  suitable  ?  Suitable  to  set  the  matter  off, 
adorn,  embellish  it,  or  suitable  simply  to  bring 
it  directly,  quick  and  potent,  to  the  apprehen- 
sion of  the  reader?  This  is  the  question  of  style, 
about  which  many  masters  have  had  many 
opinions ;  upon  which  you  can  make  up  no  safe 
generalization  from  the  practice  of  those  who 
have  unquestionably  given  to  the  matter  of  their 
thought  immortal  form,  an  accent  or  a  coun- 
tenance never  to  be  forgotten.  Who  shall  say 
how  much  of  Burke's  splendid  and  impressive 
imagery  is  part  and  stuff  of  his  thought,  or  tell 
why  even  that  part  of  Newman's  prose  which 
is  devoid  of  ornament,  stripped  to  its  shining 
skin,  and  running  bare  and  lithe  and  athletic 
to  carry  its  tidings  to  men,  should  promise  to 
enjoy  as  certain  an  immortality  ?  Why  should 
Lamb  go  so  quaintly  and  elaborately  to  work 

32 


MERE  LITERATURE 

upon  his  critical  essays,  taking  care  to  perfume 
every  sentence,  if  possible,  with  the  fine  savor 
of  an  old  phrase,  if  the  same  business  could  be 
as  effectively  done  in  the  plain  and  even  ca-- 
dences  of  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold's  prose?  Why 
should  Gibbon  be  so  formal,  so  stately,  so  elab- 
orate, when  he  had  before  his  eyes  the  example 
of  great  Tacitus,  whose  direct,  sententious  style 
had  outlived  by  so  many  hundred  years  the 
very  language  in  which  he  wrote  ?  In  poetry, 
who  shall  measure  the  varieties  of  style  lav- 
ished upon  similar  themes  ?  The  matter  of  vital 
thought  is  not  separable  from  the  thinker;  its 
forms  must  suit  his  handling  as  well  as  fit  his 
conception.  Any  style  is  author's  stuff  which 
is  suitable  to  his  purpose  and  his  fancy.  He 
may  use  rich  fabrics  with  which  to  costume  his 
thoughts,  or  he  may  use  simple  stone  from 
which  to  sculpture  them,  and  leave  them  bare. 
His  only  limits  are  those  of  art.  He  may  not  in- 
dulge a  taste  for  the  merely  curious  or  fantastic. 
The  quaint  writers  have  quaint  thoughts ;  their 

33 


MERE  LITERATURE 

material  is  suitable.  They  do  not  merely  satisfy 
themselves  as  virtuosi,  with  collections  of  odd 
phrases  and  obsolete  meanings.  They  needed 
twisted  words  to  fit  the  eccentric  patterns  of 
their  thought.  The  great  writer  has  always  dig- 
nity, restraint,  propriety,  adequateness ;  what 
time  he  loses  these  qualities  he  ceases  to  be 
great.  His  style  neither  creaks  nor  breaks  un- 
der his  passion,  but  carries  the  strain  with  un- 
shaken strength.  It  is  not  trivial  or  mean,  but 
speaks  what  small  meanings  fall  in  its  way  with 
simplicity,  as  conscious  of  their  smallness.  Its 
playfulness  is  within  bounds ;  its  laugh  never 
bursts  too  boisterously  into  a  guffaw.  A  great 
style  always  knows  what  it  would  be  at,  and 
does  the  thing  appropriately,  with  the  larger 
sort  of  taste. 

This  is  the  condemnation  of  tricks  of  phrase, 
devices  to  catch  the  attention,  exaggerations 
and  loud  talk  to  hold  it.  No  writer  can  afford  to 
strive  after  effect,  if  his  striving  is  to  be  appar- 
ent. For  just  and  permanent  effect  is  missed 

34 


MERE  LITERATURE 

altogether  unless  it  be  so  completely  attained 
as  to  seem  like  some  touch  of  sunlight,  per- 
fect, natural,  inevitable,  wrought  without  effort 
and  without  deliberate  purpose  to  be  effective. 
Mere  audacity  of  attempt  can,  of  course,  never 
win  the  wished  for  result ;  and  if  the  attempt 
be  successful,  it  is  not  audacious.  What  we  call 
audacity  in  a  great  writer  has  no  touch  of  te- 
merity, sauciness,  or  arrogance  in  it.  It  is  sim- 
ply high  spirit,  a  dashing  and  splendid  display 
of  strength.  Boldness  is  ridiculous  unless  it  be 
impressive,  and  it  can  be  impressive  only  when 
backed  by  solid  forces  of  character  and  attain- 
ment. Your  plebeian  hack  cannot  afford  the 
showy  paces;  only  the  full-blooded  Arabian 
has  the  sine  wand  proportion  to  lend  them  per- 
fect grace  and  propriety.  The  art  of  letters 
eschews  the  bizarre  as  rigidly  as  does  every 
other  fine  art.  It  mixes  its  colors  with  brains, 
and  is  obedient  to  great  Nature's  sane  stand- 
ards of  right  adjustment  in  all  that  it  attempts. 
You  can  make  no  catalogue  of  these  feat- 
35 


MERE  LITERATURE 

ures  of  great  writing ;  there  is  no  science  of 
literature.  Literature  in  its  essence  is  mere 
spirit,  and  you  must  experience  it  rather  than 
analyze  it  too  formally.  It  is  the  door  to  nature 
and  to  ourselves.  It  opens  our  hearts  to  receive 
the  experiences  of  great  men  and  the  concep- 
tions of  great  races.  It  awakens  us  to  the  sig- 
nificance of  action  and  to  the  singular  power 
of  mental  habit.  It  airs  our  souls  in  the  wide 
atmosphere  of  contemplation.  "  In  these  bad 
days,  when  it  is  thought  more  educationally 
useful  to  know  the  principle  of  the  common 
pump  than  Keats'  Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn/'  as 
Mr.  Birrell  says,  we  cannot  afford  to  let  one 
single  precious  sentence  of  "  mere  literature  " 
go  by  us  unread  or  unpraised.  If  this  free 
people  to  which  we  belong  is  to  keep  its  fine 
spirit,  its  perfect  temper  amidst  affairs,  its  high 
courage  in  the  face  of  difficulties,  its  wise  tem- 
perateness  and  wide-eyed  hope,  it  must  con- 
tinue to  drink  deep  and  often  from  the  old  wells 
of  English  undefiled,  quaff  the  keen  tonic  of  its 

36 


MERE  LITERATURE 

best  ideals,  keep  its  blood  warm  with  all  the 
great  utterances  of  exalted  purpose  and  pure 
principle  of  which  its  matchless  literature  is 
full.  The  great  spirits  of  the  past  must  com- 
mand us  in  the  tasks  of  the  future.  Mere  liter- 
ature will  keep  us  pure  and  keep  us  strong. 
Even  though  it  puzzle  or  altogether  escape 
scientific  method,  it  may  keep  our  horizon  clear 
for  us,  and  our  eyes  glad  to  look  bravely  forth 
upon  the  world. 


II 

THE  AUTHOR  HIMSELF 


WHO  can  help  wondering,  concerning  the 
modern  multitude  of  books,  where  all  these 
companions  of  his  reading  hours  will  be  buried 
when  they  die ;  which  will  have  monuments 
erected  to  them ;  which  escape  the  envy  of  time 
and  live  ?  It  is  pathetic  to  think  of  the  number 
that  must  be  forgotten,  after  having  been  re- 
moved from  the  good  places  to  make  room  for 
their  betters. 

Much  the  most  pathetic  thought  aboutbooks, 
however,  is  that  excellence  will  not  save  them. 
Their  fates  will  be  as  whimsical  as  those  of  the 
humankind  which  produces  them.  Knaves  find 
it  as  easy  to  get  remembered  as  good  men.  It 
is  not  right  living  or  learning  or  kind  offices, 
simply  and  of  themselves,  but  —  something 
else  that  gives  immortality  of  fame.  Be  a  book 
never  so  scholarly,  it  may  die ;  be  it  never  so 

41 


MERE  LITERATURE 

witty,  or  never  so  full  of  good  feeling  and  of 
an  honest  statement  of  truth,  it  may  not  live. 
When  once  a  book  has  become  immortal, 
we  think  that  we  can  see  why  it  became  so.  It 
contained,  we  perceive,  a  casting  of  thought 
which  could  not  but  arrest  and  retain  men's 
attention ;  it  said  some  things  once  and  for  all 
because  it  gave  them  their  best  expression.  Or 
else  it  spoke  with  a  grace  or  with  a  fire  of  im- 
agination, with  a  sweet  cadence  of  phrase  and 
a  full  harmony  of  tone,  which  have  made  it 
equally  dear  to  all  generations  of  those  who 
love  the  free  play  of  fancy  or  the  incomparable 
music  of  perfected  human  speech.  Or  perhaps 
it  uttered  with  candor  and  simplicity  some  uni- 
versal sentiment;  perchance  pictured  some- 
thing in  the  tragedy  or  the  comedy  of  man's  life 
as  it  was  never  pictured  before,  and  must  on 
that  account  be  read  and  read  again  as  not  to  be 
superseded.  There  must  be  something  special, 
we  judge,  either  in  its  form  or  in  its  substance, 
to  account  for  its  unwonted  fame  and  fortune. 

42 


THE  AUTHOR  HIMSELF 

This  upon  first  analysis,  taking  one  book  at 
a  time.  A  look  deeper  into  the  heart  of  the 
matter  enables  us  to  catch  at  least  a  glimpse 
of  a  single  and  common  source  of  immortal- 
ity. The  world  is  attracted  by  books  as  each 
man  is  attracted  by  his  several  friends.  You 
recommend  that  capital  fellow  So-and-So  to 
the  acquaintance  of  others  because  of  his  dis- 
criminating and  diverting  powers  of  observa- 
tion :  the  very  tones  and  persons  —  it  would 
seem  the  very  selves — of  every  type  of  man 
live  again  in  his  mimicries  and  descriptions.  He 
is  the  dramatist  of  your  circle;  you  can  never 
forget  him,  nor  can  any  one  else ;  his  circle  of 
acquaintances  can  never  grow  smaller.  Could 
he  live  on  and  retain  perennially  that  wonder- 
ful freshness  and  vivacity  of  his,  he  must  be- 
come the  most  famous  guest  and  favorite  of  the 
world.  Who  that  has  known  a  man  quick  and 
shrewd  to  see  dispassionately  the  inner  history, 
the  reason  and  the  ends,  of  the  combinations  of 
society,  and  at  the  same  time  eloquent  to  tell 

43 


MERE  LITERATURE 

of  them,  with  a  hold  on  the  attention  gained  by 
a  certain  quaint  force  and  sagacity  resident  in 
no  other  man,  can  find  it  difficult  to  understand 
why  we  still  resort  to  Montesquieu  ?  Possibly 
there  are  circles  favored  of  the  gods  who  have 
known  some  fellow  of  infinite  store  of  miscel- 
laneous and  curious  learning,  who  has  greatly 
diverted  both  himself  and  his  friends  by  a  way 
peculiar  to  himself  of  giving  it  out  upon  any 
and  all  occasions,  item  by  item,  as  if  it  were  all 
homogeneous  and  of  a  piece,  and  by  his  odd 
skill  in  making  unexpected  application  of  it 
to  out-of-the-way,  unpromising  subjects,  as  if 
there  were  in  his  view  of  things  mental  no  such 
disintegrating  element  as  incongruity.  Such  a 
circle  would  esteem  it  strange  were  Burton  not 
beloved  of  the  world.  And  so  of  those,  if  any 
there  be,  who  have  known  men  of  simple,  calm, 
transparent  natures,  untouched  by  storm  or 
perplexity,  whose  talk  was  full  of  such  serious, 
placid  reflection  as  seemed  to  mirror  their  own 
reverent  hearts, —  talk  often  prosy,  but  more 

44 


THE  AUTHOR  HIMSELF 

often  touchingly  beautiful,  because  of  its  near- 
ness to  nature  and  the  solemn  truth  of  life. 
There  may  be  those,  also,  who  have  felt  the 
thrill  of  personal  contact  with  some  stormy 
peasant  nature  full  of  strenuous,  unsparing 
speech  concerning  men  and  affairs.  These 
have  known  why  a  Wordsworth  or  a  Carlyle 
must  be  read  by  all  generations  of  those  who 
love  words  of  first-hand  inspiration.  In  short, 
in  every  case  of  literary  immortality  origin- 
ative personality  is  present.  Not  origination 
simply,  —  that  may  be  mere  invention,  which 
in  literature  has  nothing  immortal  about  it ;  but 
origination  which  takes  its  stamp  and  character 
from  the  originator,  which  is  his  spirit  given 
to  the  world,  which  is  himself  outspoken. 

Individuality  does  not  consist  in  the  use  of 
the  very  personal  pronoun,  /:  it  consists  in 
tone,  in  method,  in  attitude,  in  point  of  view ; 
it  consists  in  saying  things  in  such  a  way  that 
you  will  yourself  be  recognized  as  a  force  in 
saying  them.  Do  we  not  at  once  know  Lamb 

45 


MERE  LITERATURE 

.f 

when  he  speaks?  And  even  more  formal 
Addison,  does  not  his  speech  bewray  and  en- 
dear him  to  us  ?  His  personal  charm  is  less 
distinct,  much  less  fascinating,  than  that  which 
goes  with  what  Lamb  speaks,  but  a  charm  he 
has  sufficient  for  immortality.  In  Steele  the 
matter  is  more  impersonal,  more  mortal.  Some 
of  Dr.  Johnson's  essays,  you  feel,  might  have 
been  written  by  a  dictionary.  It  is  impersonal 
matter  that  is  dead  matter.  Are  you  asked  who 
fathered  a  certain  brilliant,  poignant  bit  of  po- 
litical analysis  ?  You  say,  Why,  only  Bagehot 
could  have  written  that.  Does  a  wittily  turned 
verse  make  you  hesitate  between  laughter  at 
its  wit  and  grave  thought  because  of  its  deeper, 
covert  meaning  ?  Do  you  not  know  that  only 
Lowell  could  do  that  ?  Do  you  catch  a  strain 
of  pure  Elizabethan  music  and  doubt  whether 
to  attribute  it  to  Shakespeare  or  to  another? 
Do  you  not  know  the  authors  who  still  live  ? 
Now,  the  noteworthy  thing  about  such  in- 
dividuality is  that  it  will  not  develop  under 

46 


THE  AUTHOR  HIMSELF 

every  star,  or  in  one  place  just  as  well  as  in 
another;  there  is  an  atmosphere  which  kills 
it,  and  there  is  an  atmosphere  which  fosters 
it.  The  atmosphere  which  kills  it  is  the  at- 
mosphere of  sophistication,  where  cleverness 
and  fashion  and  knowingness  thrive  :  clever- 
ness, which  is  froth,  not  strong  drink ;  fash- 
ion, which  is  a  thing  assumed,  not  a  thing  of 
nature ;  and  knowingness,  which  is  naught. 

Of  course  there  are  born,  now  and  again, 
as  tokens  of  some  rare  mood  of  Nature,  men 
of  so  intense  and  individual  a  cast  that  circum- 
stance and  surroundings  affect  them  little 
more  than  friction  affects  an  express  train. 
They  command  their  own  development  with- 
out even  the  consciousness  that  to  command 
costs  strength.  These  cannot  be  sophisticated; 
for  sophistication  is  subordination  to  the  ways 
of  your  world.  But  these  are  the  very  greatest 
and  the  very  rarest ;  and  it  is  not  the  greatest 
and  the  rarest  alone  who  shape  the  world  and 
its  thought.  That  is  done  also  by  the  great 

47 


MERE  LITERATURE 

and  the  merely  extraordinary.  There  is  a 
rank  and  file  in  literature,  even  in  the  liter- 
ature of  immortality,  and  these  must  go  much 
to  school  to  the  people  about  them. 

It  is  by  the  number  and  charm  of  the  individ- 
ualities which  it  contains  that  the  literature  of 
any  country  gains  distinction.  We  turn  any- 
whither  to  know  men.  The  best  way  to  foster 
literature,  if  it  may  be  fostered,  is  to  cultivate 
the  author  himself,  —  a  plant  of  such  delicate 
and  precarious  growth  that  special  soils  are 
needed  to  produce  it  in  its  full  perfection.  The 
conditions  which  foster  individuality  are  those 
which  foster  simplicity,  thought  and  action 
which  are  direct,  naturalness,  spontaneity. 
What  are  these  conditions  ? 

In  the  first  place,  a  certain  helpful  ignor- 
ance. It  is  best  for  the  author  to  be  born  away 
from  literary  centres,  or  to  be  excluded  from 
their  ruling  set  if  he  be  born  in  them.  It  is 
best  that  he  start  out  with  his  thinking,  not 
knowing  how  much  has  been  thought  and  said 

48 


THE  AUTHOR  HIMSELF 

about  everything.  A  certain  amount  of  ignor- 
ance will  insure  his  sincerity,  will  increase  his 
boldness  and  shelter  his  genuineness,  which  is 
his  hope  of  power.  Not  ignorance  of  life,  but 
life  may  be  learned  in  any  neighborhood ;  — 
not  ignorance  of  the  greater  laws  which  gov- 
ern human  affairs,  but  they  may  be  learned 
without  a  library  of  historians  and  commen- 
tators, by  imaginative  sense,  by  seeing  bet- 
ter than  by  reading ;  —  not  ignorance  of  the 
infinitudes  of  human  circumstance,  but  these 
may  be  perceived  without  the  intervention 
of  universities ;  —  not  ignorance  of  one's  self 
and  of  one's  neighbor ;  but  innocence  of  the 
sophistications  of  learning,  its  research  with- 
out love,  its  knowledge  without  inspiration, 
its  method  without  grace;  freedom  from  its 
shame  at  trying  to  know  many  things  as  well 
as  from  its  pride  of  trying  to  know  but  one 
thing ;  ignorance  of  that  faith  in  small  con- 
founding facts  which  is  contempt  for  large 
reassuring  principles. 

49 


MERE  LITERATURE 

Our  present  problem  is  not  how  to  clarify 
our  reasonings  and  perfect  our  analyses,  but 
how  to  reenrich  and  reenergize  our  literature. 
That  literature  is  suffering,  not  from  ignor- 
ance, but  from  sophistication  and  self-con- 
sciousness ;  and  it  is  suffering  hardly  less  from 
excess  of  logical  method.  Ratiocination  does 
not  keep  us  pure,  render  us  earnest,  or  make 
us  individual  and  specific  forces  in  the  world. 
Those  inestimable  results  are  accomplished 
by  whatever  implants  principle  and  conviction, 
whatever  quickens  with  inspiration,  fills  with 
purpose  and  courage,  gives  outlook,  and  makes 
character.  Reasoned  thinking  does  indeed  clear 
the  mind's  atmospheres  and  lay  open  to  its  view 
fields  of  action  ;  but  it  is  loving  and  believing, 
sometimes  hating  and  distrusting,  often  preju- 
dice and  passion,  always  the  many  things  which 
we  call  the  one  thing,  character,  which  create 
and  shape  our  acting.  Life  quite  overtowers 
logic.  Thinking  and  erudition  alone  will  not 
equip  for  the  great  tasks  and  triumphs  of  life 

50 


THE  AUTHOR  HIMSELF 

and  literature :  the  persuading  of  other  men's 
purposes,  the  entrance  into  other  men's  minds 
to  possess  them  forever.  Culture  broadens  and 
sweetens  literature,  but  native  sentiment  and 
unmarred  individuality  create  it.  Not  all  of 
mental  power  lies  in  the  processes  of  thinking. 
There  is  power  also  in  passion,  in  personal- 
ity, in  simple,  native,  uncritical  conviction, 
in  unschooled  feeling.  The  power  of  science, 
of  system,  is  executive,  not  stimulative.  I  do 
not  find  that  I  derive  inspiration,  but  only 
information,  from  the  learned  historians  and 
analysts  of  liberty  ;  but  from  the  sonneteers, 
the  poets,  who  speak  its  spirit  and  its  exalted 
purpose,  —  who,  recking  nothing  of  the  his- 
torical method,  obey  only  the  high  method  of 
their  own  hearts,  —  what  may  a  man  not  gain 
of  courage  and  confidence  in  the  right  way  of 
politics  ? 

It  is  your  direct,  unhesitating,  intent,  head- 
long man,  who  has  his  sources  in  the  moun- 
tains, who  digs  deep  channels  for  himself  in  the 

51 


MERE  LITERATURE 

soil  of  his  times  and  expands  into  the  mighty 
river,  to  become  a  landmark  forever;  and  not 
your  "  broad  "  man,  sprung  from  the  schools, 
who  spreads  his  shallow,  extended  waters  over 
the  wide  surfaces  of  learning,  to  leave  rich  de- 
posits, it  may  be,  for  other  men's  crops  to  grow 
in,  but  to  be  himself  dried  up  by  a  few  score 
summer  noons.  The  man  thrown  early  upon 
his  own  resources,  and  already  become  a  con- 
queror of  success  before  being  thrown  with 
the  literary  talkers ;  the  man  grown  to  giant's 
stature  in  some  rural  library,  and  become  ex- 
ercised there  in  a  giant's  prerogatives  before 
ever  he  has  been  laughingly  told,  to  his  heart's 
confusion,  of  scores  of  other  giants  dead  and 
forgotten  long  ago ;  the  man  grounded  in  hope 
and  settled  in  conviction  ere  he  has  discovered 
how  many  hopes  time  has  seen  buried,  how 
many  convictions  cruelly  given  the  lie  direct 
by  fate;  the  man  who  has  carried  his  youth  into 
middle  age  before  going  into  the  chill  atmos- 
phere of  blast  sentiment ;  the  quiet,  stern  man 

52 


THE  AUTHOR  HIMSELF 

who  has  cultivated  literature  on  a  little  oat- 
meal before  thrusting  himself  upon  the  great 
world  as  a  prophet  and  seer;  the  man  who  pro- 
nounces new  eloquence  in  the  rich  dialect  in 
which  he  was  bred;  the  man  come  up  to  the 
capital  from  the  provinces,  —  these  are  the 
men  who  people  the  world's  mind  with  new 
creations,  and  give  to  the  sophisticated  learned 
of  the  next  generation  new  names  to  conjure 
with. 

If  you  have  a  candid  and  well-informed 
friend  among  city  lawyers,  ask  him  where  the 
best  masters  of  his  profession  are  bred, — in  the 
city  or  in  the  country.  He  will  reply  without 
hesitation,  "In  the  country."  You  will  hardly 
need  to  have  him  state  the  reason.  The  coun- 
try lawyer  has  been  obliged  to  study  all  parts 
of  the  law  alike,  and  he  has  known  no  reason 
why  he  should  not  do  so.  He  has  not  had  the 
chance  to  make  himself  a  specialist  in  any  one 
branch  of  the  law,  as  is  the  fashion  among  city 
practitioners,  and  he  has  not  coveted  the  op- 

53 


MERE  LITERATURE 

portunity  to  do  it.  There  would  not  have  been 
enough  special  cases  to  occupy  or  remunerate 
him  if  he  had  coveted  it.  He  has  dared  attempt 
the  task  of  knowing  the  whole  law,  and  yet 
without  any  sense  of  daring,  but  as  a  matter  of 
course.  In  his  own  little  town,  in  the  midst  of 
his  own  small  library  of  authorities,  it  has  not 
seemed  to  him  an  impossible  task  to  explore 
all  the  topics  that  engage  his  profession;  the 
guiding  principles,  at  any  rate,  of  all  branches 
of  the  great  subject  were  open  to  him  in  a  few 
books.  And  so  it  often  happens  that  when  he 
has  found  his  sea  legs  on  the  sequestered  in- 
lets at  home,  and  ventures,  as  he  sometimes 
will,  upon  the  great,  troublous,  and  much-fre- 
quented waters  of  city  practice  in  search  of 
more  work  and  larger  fees,  the  country  lawyer 
will  once  and  again  confound  his  city-bred 
brethren  by  discovering  to  them  the  fact  that 
the  law  is  a  many-sided  thing  of  principles,  and 
not  altogether  a  one-sided  thing  of  technical 
rule  and  arbitrary  precedent. 

54 


THE  AUTHOR  HIMSELF 

It  would  seem  to  be  necessary  that  the  author 
who  is  to  stand  as  a  distinct  and  imperative 
individual  among  the  company  of  those  who 
express  the  world's  thought  should  come  to  a 
hard  crystallization  before  subjecting  himself 
to  the  tense  strain  of  cities,  the  corrosive  acids 
of  critical  circles.  The  ability  to  see  for  one's 
self  is  attainable,  not  by  mixing  with  crowds 
and  ascertaining  how  they  look  at  things,  but 
by  a  certain  aloofness  and  self-containment. 
The  solitariness  of  some  genius  is  not  acci- 
dental; it  is  characteristic  and  essential.  To 
the  constructive  imagination  there  are  some 
immortal  feats  which  are  possible  only  in  se- 
clusion. The  man  must  heed  first  and  most 
of  all  the  suggestions  of  his  own  spirit;  and  the 
world  can  be  seen  from  windows  overlooking 
the  street  better  than  from  the  street  itself. 

Literature  grows  rich,  various,  full-voiced 
largely  through  the  re-discovery  of  truth, 
by  thinking  re-thought,  by  stories  re-told,  by 
songs  re-sung.  The  song  of  human  experience 

55 


MERE  LITERATURE 

grows  richer  and  richer  in  its  harmonies,  and 
must  grow  until  the  full  accord  and  melody  are 
come.  If  too  soon  subjected  to  the  tense  strain 
of  the  city,  a  man  cannot  expand ;  he  is  beaten 
out  of  his  natural  shape  by  the  incessant  im- 
pact and  press  of  men  and  affairs.  It  will  often 
turn  out  that  the  unsophisticated  man  will  dis- 
play not  only  more  force,  but  more  literary 
skill  even,  than  the  trained  litterateur.  For  one 
thing,  he  will  probably  have  enjoyed  a  fresher 
contact  with  old  literature.  He  reads  not  for 
the  sake  of  a  critical  acquaintance  with  this  or 
that  author,  with  no  thought  of  going  through 
all  his  writings  and  "working  him  up/'  but  as 
he  would  ride  a  spirited  horse,  for  love  of  the 
life  and  motion  of  it. 

A  general  impression  seems  to  have  gained 
currency  that  the  last  of  the  bullying,  omni- 
scient critics  was  buried  in  the  grave  of  Fran- 
cis Jeffrey;  and  it  is  becoming  important  to 
correct  the  misapprehension.  There  never  was 
a  time  when  there  was  more  superior  know- 

56 


THE  AUTHOR  HIMSELF 

ledge,  more  specialist  omniscience,  among  re- 
viewers than  there  is  to-day ;  not  pretended 
superior  knowledge,  but  real.  Jeffrey's  was 
very  real  of  its  kind.  For  those  who  write 
books,  one  of  the  special,  inestimable  advan- 
tages of  lacking  a  too  intimate  knowledge  of 
the  "world  of  letters"  consists  in  not  knowing 
all  that  is  known  by  those  who  review  books, 
in  ignorance  of  the  fashions  among  those  who 
construct  canons  of  taste.  The  modern  critic 
is  a  leader  of  fashion.  He  carries  with  him  the 
air  of  a  literary  worldliness.  If  your  book  be  a 
novel,  your  reviewer  will  know  all  previous 
plots,  all  former,  all  possible,  motives  and  situ- 
ations. You  cannot  write  anything  absolutely 

t 

new  for  him,  and  why  should  you  desire  to  do 
again  what  has  been  done  already?  If  it  be  a 
poem,  the  reviewer's  head  already  rings  with 
the  whole  gamut  of  the  world's  metrical  music; 
he  can  recognize  any  simile,  recall  all  turns  of 
phrase,  match  every  sentiment ;  why  seek  to 
please  him  anew  with  old  things?  If  it  concern 

57 


MERE  LITERATURE 

itself  with  the  philosophy  of  politics,  he  can  and 
will  set  himself  to  test  it  by  the  whole  history 
of  its  kind  from  Plato  down  to  Benjamin  Kidd. 
How  can  it  but  spoil  your  sincerity  to  know 
that  your  critic  will  know  everything  ?  Will 
you  not  be  tempted  of  the  devil  to  anticipate 
his  judgment  or  his  pretensions  by  pretending 
to  know  as  much  as  he  ? 

The  literature  of  creation  naturally  falls  into 
two  kinds :  that  which  interprets  nature  or  hu- 
man action,  and  that  which  interprets  self.  Both 
of  these  may  have  the  flavor  of  immortality, 
but  neither  unless  it  be  free  from  self-con- 
sciousness. No  man,  therefore,  can  create  after 
the  best  manner  in  either  of  these  kinds  who  is 
an  habitue  of  the  circles  made  so  delightful  by 
those  interesting  men,  the  modern  literati,  so- 
phisticated in  all  the  fashions,  ready  in  all  the 
catches  of  the  knowing  literary  world  which 
centres  in  the  city  and  the  university.  He  can- 
not always  be  simple  and  straightforward.  He 
cannot  be  always  and  without  pretension  him- 

58 


THE  AUTHOR  HIMSELF 

self,  bound  by  no  other  man's  canons  of  taste 
in  speech  or  conduct.  In  the  judgment  of  such 
circles  there  is  but  one  thing  for  you  to  do  if 
you  would  gain  distinction  :  you  must  "  beat 
the  record ; "  you  must  do  certain  definite  liter- 
ary feats  better  than  they  have  yet  been  done. 
You  are  pitted  against  the  literary  "field." 
You  are  hastened  into  the  paralysis  of  compar- 
ing yourself  with  others,  and  thus  away  from 
the  health  of  unhesitating  self-expression  and 
directness  of  first-hand  vision. 

It  would  be  not  a  little  profitable  if  we  could 
make  correct  analysis  of  the  proper  relations 
of  learning — learning  of  the  critical,  accurate 
sort — to  origination,  of  learning's  place  in  lit- 
erature. Although  learning  is  never  the  real 
parent  of  literature,  but  only  sometimes  its 
foster-father,  and  although  the  native  prompt- 
ings of  soul  and  sense  are  its  best  and  freshest 
sources,  there  is  always  the  danger  that  learn- 
ing will  claim,  in  every  court  of  taste  which 
pretends  to  jurisdiction,  exclusive  and  preem- 

59 


MERE  LITERATURE 

inent  rights  as  the  guardian  and  preceptor  of 
authors.  An  effort  is  constantly  being  made 
to  create  and  maintain  standards  of  literary 
worldliness,  if  I  may  coin  such  a  phrase.  The 
thorough  man  of  the  world  affects  to  despise 
natural  feeling ;  does  at  any  rate  actually  de- 
spise all  displays  of  it.  He  has  an  eye  always 
on  his  world's  best  manners,  whether  native 
or  imported,  and  is  at  continual  pains  to  be 
master  of  the  conventions  of  society ;  he  will 
mortify  the  natural  man  as  much  as  need  be 
in  order  to  be  in  good  form.  What  learned 
criticism  essays  to  do  is  to  create  a  similar 
literary  worldliness,  to  establish  fashions  and 
conventions  in  letters. 

I  have  an  odd  friend  in  one  of  the  northern 
counties  of  Georgia, — a  county  set  off  by  itself 
among  the  mountains,  but  early  found  out  by 
refined  people  in  search  of  summer  refuge  from 
the  unhealthful  air  of  the  southern  coast.  He 
belongs  to  an  excellent  family  of  no  little  cul- 
ture, but  he  was  surprised  in  the  midst  of  his 

60 


THE  AUTHOR  HIMSELF 

early  schooling  by  the  coming  on  of  the  war; 
and  education  given  pause  in  such  wise  seldom 
begins  again  in  the  schools.  He  was  left,  there- 
fore, to  "finish  "  his  mind  as  best  he  might  in 
the  companionship  of  the  books  in  his  uncle's 
library.  These  books  were  of  the  old  sober 
sort:  histories,  volumes  of  travels,  treatises  on 
laws  and  constitutions,  theologies,  philosophies 
more  fanciful  than  the  romances  encased  in 
neighbor  volumes  on  another  shelf.  But  they 
were  books  which  were  used  to  being  taken 
down  and  read ;  they  had  been  daily  compan- 
ions to  the  rest  of  the  family,  and  they  became 
familiar  companions  to  my  friend's  boyhood. 
He  went  to  them  day  after  day,  because  theirs 
was  the  only  society  offered  him  in  the  lonely 
days  when  uncle  and  brothers  were  at  the  war, 
and  the  women  were  busy  about  the  tasks  of 
the  home.  How  literally  did  he  make  those 
delightful  old  volumes  his  familiars,  his  cro- 
nies !  He  never  dreamed  the  while,  however, 
that  he  was  becoming  learned;  it  never  seemed 

61 


MERE  LITERATURE 

to  occur  to  him  that  everybody  else  did  not  read 
just  as  he  did,  in  just  such  a  library.  He  found 
out  afterwards,  of  course,  that  he  had  kept 
much  more  of  such  company  than  had  the  men 
with  whom  he  loved  to  chat  at  the  post-office 
or  around  the  fire  in  the  village  shops,  the  ha- 
bitual resorts  of  all  who  were  socially  inclined ; 
but  he  attributed  that  to  lack  of  time  on  their 
part,  or  to  accident,  and  has  gone  on  thinking 
until  now  that  all  the  books  that  come  within 
his  reach  are  the  natural  intimates  of  man.  And 
so  you  shall  hear  him,  in  his  daily  familiar  talk 
with  his  neighbors,  draw  upon  his  singular 
stores  of  wise,  quaint  learning  with  the  quiet  col- 
loquial assurance,  "They  tell  me/'  as  if  books 
contained  current  rumor ;  and  quote  the  poets 
with  the  easy  unaflfectedness  with  which  others 
cite  a  common  maxim  of  the  street !  He  has 
been  heard  to  refer  to  Dr.  Arnold  of  Rugby  as 
"that  school  teacher  over  there  in  England." 
Surely  one  may  treasure  the  image  of  this 
simple,  genuine  man  of  learning  as  the  image 

62 


THE  AUTHOR  HIMSELF 

of  a  sort  of  masterpiece  of  Nature  in  her  own 
type  of  erudition,  a  perfect  sample  of  the  kind 
of  learning  that  might  beget  the  very  highest 
sort  of  literature ;  the  literature,  namely,  of 
authentic  individuality.  It  is  only  under  one  of 
two  conditions  that  learning  will  not  dull  the 
edge  of  individuality :  first,  if  one  never  sus- 
pect that  it  is  creditable  and  a  matter  of  pride 
to  be  learned,  and  so  never  become  learned  for 
the  sake  of  becoming  so ;  or,  second,  if  it  never 
suggest  to  one  that  investigation  is  better  than 
reflection.  Learned  investigation  leads  to  many 
good  things,  but  one  of  these  is  not  great  lit- 
erature, because  learned  investigation  com- 
mands, as  the  first  condition  of  its  success,  the 
repression  of  individuality. 

His  mind  is  a  great  comfort  to  every  man 
who  has  one;  but  a  heart  is  not  often  to  be 
so  conveniently  possessed.  Hearts  frequently 
give  trouble;  they  are  straightforward  and 
impulsive,  and  can  seldom  be  induced  to  be 
prudent.  They  must  be  schooled  before  they 

63 


MERE  LITERATURE 

will  become  insensible ;  they  must  be  coached 
before  they  can  be  made  to  care  first  and  most 
for  themselves :  and  in  all  cases  the  mind  must 
be  their  schoolmaster  and  coach.  They  are 
irregular  forces ;  but  the  mind  may  be  trained 
to  observe  all  points  of  circumstance  and  all 
motives  of  occasion. 

No  doubt  it  is  considerations  of  this  nature 
that  must  be  taken  to  explain  the  fact  that  our 
universities  are  erected  entirely  for  the  service 
of  the  tractable  mind,  while  the  heart's  only 
education  must  be  gotten  from  association  with 
its  neighbor  heart,  and  in  the  ordinary  courses 
of  the  world.  Life  is  its  only  university.  Mind 
is  monarch,  whose  laws  claim  supremacy  in 
those  lands  which  boast  the  movements  of 
civilization,  and  it  must  command  all  the  in- 
strumentalities of  education.  At  least  such  is 
the  theory  of  the  constitution  of  the  modern 
world.  It  is  to  be  suspected  that,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  mind  is  one  of  those  modern  monarchs 
who  reign,  but  do  not  govern.  That  old  House 

64 


THE  AUTHOR  HIMSELF 

of  Commons,  that  popular  chamber  in  which 
the  passions,  the  prejudices,  the  inborn,  un- 
thinking affections  long  ago  repudiated  by 
mind,  have  their  full  representation,  controls 
much  the  greater  part  of  the  actual  conduct  of 
affairs.  To  come  out  of  the  figure,  reasoned 
thought  is,  though  perhaps  the  presiding,  not 
yet  the  regnant  force  in  the  world.  In  life  and 
in  literature  it  is  subordinate.  The  future  may 
belong  to  it;  but  the  present  and  past  do  not. 
Faith  and  virtue  do  not  wear  its  livery ;  friend- 
ship, loyalty,  patriotism,  do  not  derive  their 
motives  from  it.  It  does  not  furnish  the  mate- 
rial for  those  masses  of  habit,  of  unquestioned 
tradition,  and  of  treasured  belief  which  are  the 
ballast  of  every  steady  ship  of  state,  enabling 
.  it  to  spread  its  sails  safely  to  the  breezes  of  pro- 
gress, and  even  to  stand  before  the  storms  of 
revolution.  And  this  is  a  fact  which  has  its 
reflection  in  literature.  There  is  a  literature  of 
reasoned  thought ;  but  by  far  the  greater  part 
of  those  writings  which  we  reckon  worthy  of 

65 


MERE  LITERATURE 

V 

that  great  name  is  the  product,  not  of  reasoned 
thought,  but  of  the  imagination  and  of  the 
spiritual  vision  of  those  who  see,  —  writings 
winged,  not  with  knowledge,  but  with  sympa- 
thy, with  sentiment,  with  heartiness.  Even  the 
literature  of  reasoned  thought  gets  its  life,  not 
from  its  logic,  but  from  the  spirit,  the  insight, 
and  the  inspiration  which  are  the  vehicle  of  its 
logic.  Thought  presides,  but  sentiment  has  the 
executive  powers ;  the  motive  functions  belong 
to  feeling. 

"  Many  people  give  many  theories  of  liter- 
ary composition/'  says  the  most  natural  and 
stimulating  of  English  critics,  "  and  Dr.  Blair, 
whom  we  will  read,  is  sometimes  said  to  have 
exhausted  the  subject;  but,unless  he  has  proved 
the  contrary,  we  believe  that  the  knack  in  style . 
is  to  write  like  a  human  being.  Some  think 
they  must  be  wise,  some  elaborate,  some  con- 
cise ;  Tacitus  wrote  like  a  pair  of  stays ;  some 
startle  us,  as  Thomas  Carlyle,  or  a  comet, 
inscribing  with  his  tail.  But  legibility  is  given 

66 


THE  AUTHOR  HIMSELF 

to  those  who  neglect  these  notions,  and  are 
willing  to  be  themselves,  to  write  their  own 
thoughts  in  their  own  words,  in  the  simplest 
words,  in  the  wordswherein  they  were  thought. 
.  .  .  Books  are  for  various  purposes,  —  tracts 
to  teach,  almanacs  to  sell,  poetry  to  make  pas- 
try ;  but  this  is  the  rarest  sort  of  a  book,  —  a 
book  to  read.  As  Dr.  Johnson  said, « Sir,  a  good 
book  is  one  you  can  hold  in  your  hand,  and 
take  to  the  fire.'  Now  there  are  extremely  few 
books  which  can,  with  any  propriety,  be  so 
treated.  When  a  great  author,  as  Grote  or 
Gibbon,  has  devoted  a  whole  life  of  horrid  in- 
dustry to  the  composition  of  a  large  history, 
one  feels  one  ought  not  to  touch  it  with  a  mere 
hand,  —  it  is  not  respectful.  The  idea  of  slav- 
ery hovers  over  the  Decline  and  Fall.  Fancy 
a  stiffly  dressed  gentleman,  in  a  stiff  chair, 
slowly  writing  that  stiff  compilation  in  a  stiff 
hand;  it  is  enough  to  stiffen  you  for  life." 

It  is  devoutly  to  be  wished  that  we  might 
learn  to  prepare  the  best  soils  for  mind,  the 

67 


MERE  LITERATURE 

best  associations  and  companionships,  the  least 
possible  sophistication.  We  are  busy  enough 
nowadays  finding  out  the  best  ways  of  fertiliz- 
ing and  stimulating  mind ;  but  that  is  not  quite 
the  same  thing  as  discovering  the  best  soils  for 
it,  and  the  best  atmospheres.  Our  culture  is,  by 
erroneous  preference,  of  the  reasoning  faculty, 
as  if  that  were  all  of  us.  Is  it  not  the  instinctive 
discontent  of  readers  seeking  stimulating  con- 
tact with  authors  that  has  given  us  the  pres- 
ent almost  passionately  spoken  dissent  from 
the  standards  set  themselves  by  the  realists  in 
fiction,  dissatisfaction  with  mere  recording  or 
observation?  And  is  not  realism  working  out 
upon  itself  the  revenge  its  enemies  would  fain 
compass  ?  Must  not  all  April  Hopes  exclude 
from  their  number  the  hope  of  immortality? 
The  rule  for  every  man  is,  not  to  depend  on 
the  education  which  other  men  prepare  for 
him,  — not  even  to  consent  to  it ;  but  to  strive 
to  see  things  as  they  are,  and  to  be  himself  as 
he  is.  Defeat  lies  in  self-surrender. 

68 


Ill 

ON  AN  AUTHOR'S  CHOICE  OF  COMPANY 


Ill 

ON  AN  AUTHOR'S  CHOICE  OF  COMPANY 

ONCE  and  again,  it  would  seem,  a  man  is  born 
into  the  world  belated.  Strayed  out  of  a  past 
age,  he  comes  among  us  like  an  alien,  lives  re- 
moved and  singular,  and  dies  a  stranger.  There 
was  a  touch  of  this  strangeness  in  Charles  Lamb. 
Much  as  he  was  loved  and  befriended,  he  was 
not  much  understood;  for  he  drew  aloof  in  his 
studies,  affected  a  "self-pleasing  quaintness" 
in  his  style,  took  no  pains  to  hit  the  taste  of 
his  day,  wandered  at  sweet  liberty  in  an  age 
which  could  scarcely  have  bred  such  another. 
"  Hang  the  age ! "  he  cried.  "  I  will  write  for 
antiquity."  And  he  did.  He  wrote  as  if  it  were 
still  Shakespeare's  day;  made  the  authors  of 
that  spacious  time  his  constant  companions  and 
study;  and  deliberately  became  himself  "the 
last  of  the  Elizabethans."  When  a  new  book 
came  out,  he  said,  he  always  read  an  old  one. 

71 


MERE  LITERATURE 

The  case  ought,  surely,  to  put  us  occasion- 
ally upon  reflecting.  May  an  author  not,  in 
some  degree,  by  choosing  his  literary  company, 
choose  also  his  literary  character,  and  so,  when 
he  comes  to  write,  write  himself  back  to  his 
masters  ?  May  he  not,  by  examining  his  own 
tastes  and  yielding  himself  obedient  to  his  nat- 
ural affinities,  join  what  congenial  group  of 
writers  he  will  ?  The  question  can  be  argued 
very  strongly  in  the  affirmative,  and  that  not 
alone  because  of  Charles  Lamb's  case.  It  might 
be  said  that  Lamb  was  antique  only  in  the  forms 
of  his  speech;  that  he  managed  very  cleverly 
to  hit  the  taste  of  his  age  in  the  substance  of 
what  he  wrote,  for  all  the  phraseology  had  so 
strong  a  flavor  of  quaintness  and  was  not  at  all 
in  the  mode  of  the  day.  It  would  not  be  easy  to 
prove  that;  but  it  really  does  not  matter.  In 
his  tastes,  certainly,  Lamb  was  an  old  author, 
not  a  new  one;  a  "modern  antique,"  as  Hood 
called  him.  He  wrote  for  his  own  age,  of  course, 
because  there  was  no  other  age  at  hand  to 

72 


AN  AUTHOR'S  CHOICE  OF  COMPANY 

write  for,  and  the  age  he  liked  best  was  past 
and  gone;  but  he  wrote  what  he  fancied  the 
great  generations  gone  by  would  have  liked, 
and  what,  as  it  has  turned  out  in  the  generosity 
of  fortune,  subsequent  ages  have  warmly  loved 
and  reverently  canonized  him  for  writing;  as 
if  there  were  a  casual  taste  that  belongs  to  a 
day  and  generation,  and  also  a  permanent  taste 
which  is  without  date,  and  he  had  hit  the  latter. 
Great  authors  are  not  often  men  of  fash- 
ion. Fashion  is  always  a  harness  and  restraint, 
whether  it  be  fashion  in  dress  or  fashion  in  vice 
or  fashion  in  literary  art;  and  a  man  who  is 
bound  by  it  is  caught  and  formed  in  a  fleeting 
mode.  The  great  writers  are  always  inno- 
vators; for  they  are  always  frank,  natural, 
and  downright,  and  frankness  and  naturalness 
always  disturb,  when  they  do  not  wholly  break 
down,  the  fixed  and  complacent  order  of  fash- 
ion. No  genuine  man  can  be  deliberately  in  the 
fashion,  indeed,  in  what  he  says,  if  he  have  any 
movement  of  thought  or  individuality  in  him. 

73 


MERE  LITERATURE 

He  remembers  what  Aristotle  says,  or  if  he 
does  not,  his  own  pride  and  manliness  fill  him 
with  the  thought  instead.  The  very  same  ac- 
tion that  is  noble  if  done  for  the  satisfaction  of 
one's  own  sense  of  right  or  purpose  of  self- 
development,  said  the  Stagirite,  may,  if  done  to 
satisfy  others,  become  menial  and  slavish.  "  It 
is  the  object  of  any  action  or  study  that  is  all- 
important,"  and  if  the  author's  chief  object  be 
to  please  he  is  condemned  already.  The  true 
spirit  of  authorship  is  a  spirit  of  liberty  which 
scorns  the  slave's  trick  of  imitation.  It  is  a  mas- 
terful spirit  of  conquest  within  the  sphere  of 
ideas  and  of  artistic  form, — an  impulse  of  em- 
pire and  origination. 

Of  course  a  man  may  choose,  if  he  will,  to 
be  less  than  a  free  author.  He  may  become  a  re- 
porter; for  there  is  such  a  thing  as  reporting 
for  books  as  well  as  reporting  for  newspapers, 
and  there  have  been  reporters  so  amazingly 
clever  that  their  very  aptness  and  wit  consti- 
tute them  a  sort  of  immortals.  You  have  proof 

74 


AN  AUTHOR'S  CHOICE  OF  COMPANY 

of  this  in  Horace  Walpole,  at  whose  hands 
gossip  and  compliment  receive  a  sort  of  apo- 
theosis. Such  men  hold  the  secret  of  a  kind 
of  alchemy  by  which  things  trivial  and  tem- 
porary may  be  transmuted  into  literature.  But 
they  are  only  inspired  reporters,  after  all;  and 
while  a  man  was  wishing,  he  might  wish  to  be 
more,  and  climb  to  better  company. 

Every  man  must,  of  course,  whether  he  will 
or  not,  feel  the  spirit  of  the  age  in  which  he  lives 
and  thinks  and  does  his  work;  and  the  mere 
contact  will  direct  and  form  him  more  or  less. 
But  to  wish  to  serve  the  spirit  of  the  age  at  any 
sacrifice  of  individual  naturalness  or  conviction, 
however  small,  is  to  harbor  the  germ  of  a  de- 
stroying disease.  Every  man  who  writes  ought 
to  write  for  immortality,  even  though  he  be  of 
the  multitude  that  die  at  their  graves ;  and  the 
standards  of  immortality  are  of  no  single  age. 
There  are  many  qualities  and  causes  that  give 
permanency  to  a  book,  but  universal  vogue 
during  the  author's  lifetime  is  not  one  of  them. 

75 


MERE  LITERATURE 

Many  authors  now  immortal  have  enjoyed  the 
applause  of  their  own  generations  ;  many  au- 
thors now  universally  admired  will,  let  us  hope, 
pass  on  to  an  easy  immortality.  The  praise  of 
your  own  day  is  no  absolute  disqualification; 
but  it  may  be  if  it  be  given  for  qualities  which 
your  friends  are  the  first  to  admire,  for  't  is 
likely  they  will  also  be  the  last.  There  is  a 
greater  thing  than  the  spirit  of  the  age,  and  that 
is  the  spirit  of  the  ages.  It  is  present  in  your 
own  day ;  it  is  even  dominant  then,  with  a  sort 
of  accumulated  power  and  mastery.  If  you  can 
strike  it,  you  will  strike,  as  it  were,  into  the 
upper  air  of  your  own  time,  where  the  forces 
are  which  run  from  age  to  age.  Lower  down, 
where  you  breathe,  is  the  more  inconstant  air 
of  opinion,  inhaled,  exhaled,  from  day  to  day, 
—  the  variant  currents,  the  forces  that  will 
carry  you,  not  forward,  but  hither  and  thither. 
We  write  nowadays  a  great  deal  with 
our  eyes  circumspectly  upon  the  tastes  of  our 
neighbors,  but  very  little  with  our  attention 

76 


AN  AUTHOR'S  CHOICE  OF  COMPANY 

bent  upon  our  own  natural,  self  -  speaking 
thoughts  and  the  very  truth  of  the  matter 
whereof  we  are  discoursing.  Now  and  again, 
it  is  true,  we  are  startled  to  find  how  the  age 
relishes  still  an  old-fashioned  romance,  if  writ- 
ten with  a  new-fashioned  vigor  and  directness ; 
how  quaint  and  simple  and  lovely  things,  as 
well  as  what  is  altogether  modern  and  analytic 
and  painful,  bring  our  most  judicious  friends 
crowding,  purses  in  hand,  to  the  book-stalls ; 
and  for  a  while  we  are  puzzled  to  see  worn-out 
styles  and  past  modes  revived.  But  we  do  not 
let  these  things  seriously  disturb  our  study  of 
prevailing  fashions.  These  books  of  adventure 
are  not  at  all,  we  assure  ourselves,  in  the  true 
spirit  of  the  age,  with  its  realistic  knowledge  of 
what  men  really  do  think  and  purpose,  and  the 
taste  for  them  must  be  only  for  the  moment  or 
in  jest.  We  need  not  let  our  surprise  at  occa- 
sional flurries  and  variations  in  the  literary  mar- 
ket cloud  or  discredit  our  analysis  of  the  real 
taste  of  the  day,  or  suffer  ourselves  to  be  be- 

77 


MERE  LITERATURE 

trayed  into  writing  romances,  however  much 
we  might  rejoice  to  be  delivered  from  the 
drudgery  of  sociological  study,  and  made  free 
to  go  afield  with  our  imaginations  upon  a  joy- 
ous search  for  hidden  treasure  or  knightly 
adventure. 

.  And  yet  it  is  quite  likely,  after  all,  that  the 
present  age  is  transient.  Past  ages  have  been. 
It  is  probable  that  the  objects  and  interests  now 
so  near  us,  looming  dominant  in  all  the  fore- 
ground of  our  day,  will  sometime  be  shifted 
and  lose  their  place  in  the  perspective.  That 
has  happened  with  the  near  objects  and  ex- 
aggerated interests  of  other  days,  so  violently 
sometimes  as  to  submerge  and  thrust  out  of 
sight  whole  libraries  of  books.  It  will  not  do 
to  reckon  upon  the  persistence  of  new  things. 
'T  were  best  to  give  them  time  to  make  trial 
of  the  seasons.  The  old  things  of  art  and  taste 
and  thought  are  the  permanent  things.  We 
know  that  they  are  because  they  have  lasted 
long  enough  to  grow  old;  and  we  deem  it 

78 


AN  AUTHOR'S  CHOICE  OF  COMPANY 

safe  to  assess  the  spirit  of  the  age  by  the  same 
test.  No  age  adds  a  great  deal  to  what  it  re- 
ceived from  the  age  that  went  before  it;  no 
time  gets  an  air  all  its  own.  The  same  atmos- 
phere holds  from  age  to  age ;  it  is  only  the  lit- 
tle movements  of  the  air  that  are  new.  In  the 
intervals  when  the  trades  do  not  blow,  fleeting 
cross-winds  venture  abroad,  the  which  if  a 
man  wait  for  he  may  lose  his  voyage. 

No  man  who  has  anything  to  say  need  stop 
and  bethink  himself  whom  he  may  please  or 
displease  in  the  saying  of  it.  He  has  but  one 
day  to  write  in,  and  that  is  his  own.  He  need 
not  fear  that  he  will  too  much  ignore  it.  He 
will  address  the  men  he  knows  when  he  writes, 
whether  he  be  conscious  of  it  or  not;  he  may 
dismiss  all  fear  on  that  score  and  use  his  liberty 
to  the  utmost.  There  are  some  things  that  can 
have  no  antiquity  and  must  ever  be  without 
date,  and  genuineness  and  spirit  are  of  their 
number.  A  man  who  has  these  must  ever  be 
"timely,"  and  at  the  same  time  fit  to  last,  if  he 

79 


MERE  LITERATURE 

can  get  his  qualities  into  what  he  writes.  He  may 
freely  read,  too,  what  he  will  that  is  congenial, 
and  form  himself  by  companionships  that  are 
chosen  simply  because  they  are  to  his  taste ; 
that  is,  if  he  be  genuine  and  in  very  truth  a  man 
of  independent  spirit.  Lamb  would  have  writ- 
ten "for  antiquity "  with  a  vengeance  had  his 
taste  for  the  quaint  writers  of  an  elder  day  been 
an  affectation,  or  the  authors  he  liked  men  them- 
selves affected  and  ephemeral.  No  age  this  side 
antiquity  would  ever  have  vouchsafed  him  a 
glance  or  a  thought.  But  it  was  not  an  affecta- 
tion, and  the  men  he  preferred  were  as  genu- 
ine and  as  spirited  as  he  was.  He  was  simply 
obeying  an  affinity  and  taking  cheer  after  his 
own  kind.  A  man  born  into  the  real  patriciate 
of  letters  may  take  his  pleasure  in  what  com- 
pany he  will  without  taint  or  loss  of  caste; 
may  go  confidently  abroad  in  the  free  world 
of  books  and  choose  his  comradeships  without 
fear  of  offense. 

More  than  that,  there  is  no  other  way  in 
80 


AN  AUTHOR'S  CHOICE  OF  COMPANY 

which  he  can  form  himself,  if  he  would  have 
his  power  transcend  a  single  age.  He  belittles 
himself  who  takes  from  the  world  no  more 
than  he  can  get  from  the  speech  of  his  own 
generation.  The  only  advantage  of  books  over 
speech  is  that  they  may  hold  from  generation 
to  generation,  and  reach,  not  a  small  group 
merely,  but  a  multitude  of  men ;  and  a  man 
who  writes  without  being  a  man  of  letters  is 
curtailed  of  his  heritage.  It  is  in  this  world  of 
old  and  new  that  he  must  form  himself  if  he 
would  in  the  end  belong  to  it  and  increase  its 
bulk  of  treasure.  If  he  has  conned  the  new  the- 
ories of  society,  but  knows  nothing  of  Burke ; 
the  new  notions  about  fiction,  and  has  not  read 
his  Scott  and  his  Richardson ;  the  new  crim- 
inology, and  wots  nothing  of  the  old  human 
nature ;  the  new  religions,  and  has  never  felt 
the  power  and  sanctity  of  the  old,  it  is  much  the 
same  as  if  he- had  read  Ibsen  and  Maeterlinck, 
and  had  never  opened  Shakespeare.  How  is 
he  to  know  wholesome  air  from  foul,  good 

81 


MERE  LITERATURE 

company  from  bad,  visions  from  nightmares  ? 
He  has  framed  himself  for  the  great  art  and 
handicraft  of  letters  only  when  he  has  taken 
all  the  human  parts  of  literature  as  if  they  were 
without  date,  and  schooled  himself  in  a  catholic 
sanity  of  taste  and  judgment. 

Then  he  may  very  safely  choose  what  com- 
pany his  own  work  shall  be  done  in,  —  in  what 
manner,  and  under  what  masters.  He  cannot 
choose  amiss  for  himself  or  for  his  generation 
if  he  choose  like  a  man,  without  light  whim  or 
weak  affectation ;  not  like  one  who  chooses  a 
costume,  but  like  one  who  chooses  a  character. 
What  is  it,  let  him  ask  himself,  that  renders 
a  bit  of  writing  a  "piece  of  literature "?  It  is 
reality.  A  "  wood-note  wild,"  sung  unpremed- 
itated and  out  of  the  heart ;  a  description  writ- 
ten as  if  with  an  undimmed  and  seeing  eye  upon 
the  very  object  described ;  an  exposition  that 
lays  bare  the  very  soul  of  the  matter ;  a  mo- 
tive truly  revealed ;  anger  that  is  righteous  and 
justly  spoken ;  mirth  that  has  its  sources  pure  ; 

82 


AN  AUTHOR'S  CHOICE  OF  COMPANY 

phrases  to  find  the  heart  of  a  thing,  and  a  heart 
seen  in  things  for  the  phrases  to  find ;  an  un- 
affected meaning  set  out  in  language  that  is 
its  own,  —  such  are  the  realities  of  literature. 
Nothing  else  is  of  the  kin.  Phrases  used  for 
their  own  sake ;  borrowed  meanings  which  the 
borrower  does  not  truly  care  for ;  an  affected 
manner ;  an  acquired  style ;  a  hollow  reason ; 
words  that  are  not  fit ;  things  which  do  not  live 
when  spoken,  —  these  are  its  falsities,  which 
die  in  the  handling. 

The  very  top  breed  of  what  is  unreal  is  be- 
gotten by  imitation.  Imitators  succeed  some- 
times, and  flourish,  even  while  a  breath  may 
last;  but  "  imitate  and  be  damned"  is  the  inex- 
orable threat  and  prophecy  of  fate  with  regard 
to  the  permanent  fortunes  of  literature.  That 
has  been  notorious  this  long  time  past.  It  is 
more  worth  noting,  lest  some  should  not  have 
observed  it,  that  there  are  other  and  subtler 
ways  of  producing  what  is  unreal.  There  are 
the  mixed  kinds  of  writing,  for  example.  Ar- 

83 


MERE  LITERATURE 

gument  is  real  if  it  come  vital  from  the  mind ; 
narrative  is  real  if  the  thing  told  have  life  and 
the  narrator  unaffectedly  see  it  while  he  speaks ; 
but  to  narrate  and  argue  in  the  same  breath 
is  naught.  Take,  for  instance,  the  familiar  ex- 
ample of  the  early  history  of  Rome.  Make  up 
your  mind  what  was  the  truth  of  the  matter, 
and  then,  out  of  the  facts  as  you  have  disen- 
tangled them,  construct  a  firmly  touched  nar- 
rative, and  the  thing  you  create  is  real,  has 
the  confidence  and  consistency  of  life.  But  mix 
the  narrative  with  critical  comment  upon  other 
writers  and  their  variant  versions  of  the  tale, 
show  by  a  nice  elaboration  of  argument  the 
whole  conjectural  basis  of  the  story,  set  your 
reader  the  double  task  of  doubting  and  accept- 
ing, rejecting  and  constructing,  and  at  once  you 
have  touched  the  whole  matter  with  unreality. 
The  narrative  by  itself  might  have  had  an  ob- 
jective validity ;  the  argument  by  itself  an  in- 
tellectual firmness,  sagacity,  vigor,  that  would 
have  sufficed  to  make  and  keep  it  potent ;  but 

84 


AN  AUTHOR'S  CHOICE  OF  COMPANY 

together  they  confound  each  other,  destroy 
each  other's  atmosphere,  make  a  double  mis- 
carriage. The  story  is  rendered  unlikely,  and 
the  argument  obscure.  This  is  the  taint  which 
has  touched  all  our  recent  historical  writing. 
The  critical  discussion  and  assessment  of  the 
sources  of  information,  which  used  to  be  a  thing 
for  the  private  mind  of  the  writer,  now  so  en- 
croach upon  the  open  text  that  the  story,  for 
the  sake  of  which  we  would  believe  the  whole 
thing  was  undertaken,  is  oftentimes  fain  to  sink 
away  into  the  foot-notes.  The  process  has 
ceased  to  be  either  pure  exegesis  or  straight- 
forward narrative,  and  history  has  ceased  to 
be  literature. 

Nor  is  this  our  only  sort  of  mixed  writing. 
Our  novels  have  become  sociological  studies, 
our  poems  vehicles  of  criticism,  our  sermons 
political  manifestos.  We  have  confounded  all 
processes  in  a  common  use,  and  do  not  know 
what  we  would  be  at.  We  can  find  no  better 
use  for  Pegasus  than  to  carry  our  vulgar  bur- 

85 


MERE  LITERATURE 

dens,  no  higher  key  for  song  than  questionings 
and  complainings.  Fancy  pulls  in  harness  with 
intellectual  doubt;  enthusiasm  walks  apologet- 
ically alongside  science.  We  try  to  make  our 
very  dreams  engines  of  social  reform.  It  is  a 
parlous  state  of  things  for  literature,  and  it  is 
high  time  authors  should  take  heed  what  com- 
pany they  keep.  The  trouble  is,  they  all  want 
to  be  "in  society,"  overwhelmed  with  invi- 
tations from  the  publishers,  well  known  and 
talked  about  at  the  clubs,  named  every  day  in 
the  newspapers,  photographed  for  the  news- 
stalls;  and  it  is  so  hard  to  distinguish  between 
fashion  and  form,  costume  and  substance,  con- 
vention and  truth,  the  things  that  show  well 
and  the  things  that  last  well;  so  hard  to  draw 
away  from  the  writers  that  are  new  and  talked 
about  and  note  those  who  are  old  and  walk 
apart,  to  distinguish  the  tones  which  are  merely 
loud  from  the  tones  that  are  genuine,  to  get  far 
enough  away  from  the  press  and  the  hubbub 
to  see  and  judge  the  movements  of  the  crowd ! 

86 


AN  AUTHOR'S  CHOICE  OF  COMPANY 

Some  will  do  it.  Choice  spirits  will  arise  and 
make  conquest  of  us,  not  "in  society,"  but  with 
what  will  seem  a  sort  of  outlawry.  The  great 
growths  of  literature  spring  up  in  the  open, 
where  the  air  is  free  and  they  can  be  a  law 
unto  themselves.  The  law  of  life,  here  as  else- 
where, is  the  law  of  nourishment:  with  what 
was  the  earth  laden,  and  the  atmosphere  ?  Lit- 
eratures are  renewed,  as  they  are  originated, 
by  uncontrived  impulses  of  nature,  as  if  the  sap 
moved  unbidden  in  the  mind.  Once  conceive 
the  matter  so,  and  Lamb's  quaint  saying  as- 
sumes a  sort  of  gentle  majesty.  A  man  should 
"write  for  antiquity"  as  a  tree  grows  into  the 
ancient  air,  —  this  old  air  that  has  moved  upon 
the  face  of  the  world  ever  since  the  day  of  crea- 
tion, which  has  set  the  law  of  life  to  all  things, 
which  has  nurtured  the  forests  and  won  the 
flowers  to  their  perfection,  which  has  fed  men's 
lungs  with  life,  sped  their  craft  upon  the  seas, 
borne  abroad  their  songs  and  their  cries,  blown 
their  forges  to  flame,  and  buoyed  up  whatever 

8? 


MERE  LITERATURE 

they  have  contrived.  'Tis  a  common  medium, 
though  a  various  life;  and  the  figure  may  serve 
the  author  for  instruction. 

The  breeding  of  authors  is  no  doubt  a  very 
occult  thing,  and  no  man  can  set  the  rules  of  it; 
but  at  least  the  sort  of  "  ampler  ether  "  in  which 
they  are  best  brought  to  maturity  is  known. 
Writers  have  liked  to  speak  of  the  Republic  of 
Letters,  as  if  to  mark  their  freedom  and  equal- 
ity; but  there  is  a  better  phrase,  namely,  the 
Community  of  Letters ;  for  that  means  inter- 
course and  comradeship  and  a  life  in  common. 
Some  take  up  their  abode  in  it  as  if  they  had 
made  no  search  for  a  place  to  dwell  in,  but 
had  come  into  the  freedom  of  it  by  blood  and 
birthright.  Others  buy  the  freedom  with  a 
great  price,  and  seek  out  all  the  sights  and 
privileges  of  the  place  with  an  eager  thorough- 
ness and  curiosity.  Still  others  win  their  way 
into  it  with  a  certain  grace  and  aptitude,  next 
best  to  the  ease  and  dignity  of  being  born  to  the 
right.  But  for  all  it  is  a  bonny  place  to  be.  Its 

88 


AN  AUTHOR'S  CHOICE  OF  COMPANY 

comradeships  are  a  liberal  education.  Some, 
indeed,  even  there,  live  apart;  but  most  run 
always  in  the  market-place  to  know  what  all 
the  rest  have  said.  Some  keep  special  company, 
while  others  keep  none  at  all.  But  all  feel 
the  atmosphere  and  life  of  the  place  in  their 
several  degrees. 

No  doubt  there  are  national  groups,  and 
Shakespeare  is  king  among  the  English,  as 
Homer  is  among  the  Greeks,  and  sober  Dante 
among  his  gay  countrymen.  But  their  thoughts 
all  have  in  common,  though  speech  divide 
them ;  and  sovereignty  does  not  exclude  com- 
radeship or  embarrass  freedom.  No  doubt 
there  is  many  a  willful,  ungoverned  fellow 
endured  there  without  question,  and  many  a 
churlish  cynic,  because  he  possesses  that  patent 
of  genuineness  or  of  a  wit  which  strikes  for  the 
heart  of  things,  which,  without  further  test, 
secures  citizenship  in  that  free  company.  What 
a  gift  of  tongues  is  there,  and  of  prophecy! 
What  strains  of  good  talk,  what  counsel  of 

89 


MERE  LITERATURE 

good  judgment,  what  cheer  of  good  tales,  what 
sanctity  of  silent  thought!  The  sight-seers 
who  pass  through  from  day  to  day,  the  press 
of  voluble  men  at  the  gates,  the  affectation 
of  citizenship  by  mere  sojourners,  the  folly  of 
those  who  bring  new  styles  or  affect  old  ones, 
the  possession  of  the  generations,  disturb  the 
calm  of  that  serene  community  not  a  whit. 
They  will  entertain  a  man  a  whole  decade,  if 
he  happen  to  stay  so  long,  though  they  know 
all  the  while  he  can  have  no  permanent  place 
among  them. 

'T  would  be  a  vast  gain  to  have  the  laws  of 
that  community  better  known  than  they  are. 
Even  the  first  principles  of  its  constitution  are 
singularly  unfamiliar.  It  is  not  a  community  of 
writers,  but  a  community  of  letters.  One  gets 
admission,  not  because  he  writes,  —  write  he 
never  so  cleverly,  like  a  gentleman  and  a  man 
of  wit,  —  but  because  he  is  literate,  a  true  in- 
itiate into  the  secret  craft  and  mystery  of  let- 
ters. What  that  secret  is  a  man  may  know,  even 

90 


AN  AUTHOR'S  CHOICE  OF  COMPANY 

though  he  cannot  practice  or  appropriate  it.  If 
a  man  can  see  the  permanent  element  in  things, 

—  the  true  sources  of  laughter,  the  real  foun- 
tains of  tears,  the  motives  that  strike  along  the 
main  lines  of  conduct,  the  acts  which  display 
the  veritable  characters  of  men,  the  trifles  that 
are  significant,  the  details  that  make  the  mass, 

—  if  he  know  these  things,  and  can  also  choose 
words  with  a  like  knowledge  of  their  power  to 
illuminate  and  reveal,  give  color  to  the  eye  and 
passion  to  the  thought,  the  secret  is  his,  and  an 
entrance  to  that  immortal  communion. 

It  may  be  that  some  learn  the  mystery  of 
that  insight  without  tutors ;  but  most  must  put 
themselves  under  governors  and  earn  their  in- 
itiation. While  a  man  lives,  at  any  rate,  he  can 
keep  the  company  of  the  masters  whose  words 
contain  the  mystery  and  open  it  to  those  who 
can  see,  almost  with  every  accent;  and  in  such 
company  it  may  at  last  be  revealed  to  him,  — 
so  plainly  that  he  may,  if  he  will,  still  linger 
in  such  comradeship  when  he  is  dead. 

91 


MERE  LITERATURE 

It  would  seem  that  there  are  two  tests  which 
admit  to  that  company,  and  that  they  are  con- 
clusive. The  one  is,  Are  you  individual  ?  the 
other,  Are  you  conversable  ?  "  I  beg  pardon," 
said  a  grave  wag,  coming  face  to  face  with  a 
small  person  of  most  consequential  air,  and  put- 
ting glass  to  eye  in  calm  scrutiny — "I  beg 
pardon ;  but  are  you  anybody  in  particular  ? " 
Such  is  very  much  the  form  of  initiation  into 
the  permanent  communion  of  the  realm  of  let- 
ters. Tell  them,  No,  but  that  you  have  done 
much  better  —  you  have  caught  the  tone  of 
a  great  age,  studied  taste,  divined  opportunity, 
courted  and  won  a  vast  public,  been  most  timely 
and  most  famous ;  and  you  shall  be  pained  to 
find  them  laughing  in  your  face.  Tell  them  you 
are  earnest,  sincere,  consecrate  to  a  cause,  an 
apostle  and  reformer,  and  they  will  still  ask 
you,  "But  are  you  anybody  in  particular?" 
They  will  mean,  "  Were  you  your  own  man 
in  what  you  thought,  and  not  a  puppet  ?  Did 
you  speak  with  an  individual  note  and  distinc- 

92 


AN  AUTHOR'S  CHOICE  OF  COMPANY 

tion  that  marked  you  able  to  think  as  well  as 
to  speak,  — to  be  yourself  in  thoughts  and  in 
words  also  ?"  "  Very  well,  then ;  you  are  wel- 
come enough." 

"That  is,  if  you  be  also  conversable."  It  is 
plain  enough  what  they  mean  by  that,  too. 
They  mean,  if  you  have  spoken  in  such  speech 
and  spirit  as  can  be  understood  from  age  to  age, 
and  not  in  the  pet  terms  and  separate  spirit  of 
a  single  day  and  generation.  Can  the  old  au- 
thors understand  you,  that  you  would  associ- 
ate with  them  ?  Will  men  be  able  to  take  your 
meaning  in  the  differing  days  to  come  ?  Or  is 
it  perishable  matter  of  the  day  that  you  deal 
in  —  little  controversies  that  carry  no  lasting 
principle  at  their  heart ;  experimental  theories 
of  life  and  science,  put  forth  for  their,  novelty 
and  with  no  test  of  their  worth;  pictures  in 
which  fashion  looms  very  large,  but  human 
nature  shows  very  small ;  things  that  please 
everybody,  but  instruct  no  one ;  mere  fancies 
that  are  an  end  in  themselves  ?  Be  you  never 

93 


MERE  LITERATURE 

so  clever  an  artist  in  words  and  in  ideas,  if  they 
be  not  the  words  that  wear  and  mean  the  same 
thing,  and  that  a  thing  intelligible,  from  age  to 
age,  the  ideas  that  shall  hold  valid  and  luminous 
in  whatever  day  or  company,  you  may  clamor 
at  the  gate  till  your  lungs  fail  and  get  never  an 
answer. 

For  that  to  which  you  seek  admission  is  a 
veritable  "  community."  In  it  you  must  be  able 
to  be,  and  to  remain,  conversable.  How  are  you 
to  test  your  preparation  meanwhile,  unless  you 
look  to  your  comradeships  now  while  yet  it  is 
time  to  learn  ?  Frequent  the  company  in  which 
you  may  learn  the  speech  and  the  manner  which 
are  fit  to  last.  Take  to  heart  the  admirable 
example  you  shall  see  set  you  there  of  using 
speech  and  manner  to  speak  your  real  thought 
and  be  genuinely  and  simply  yourself. 


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